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MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 



The articles in this volume were written originally 
at the request of and for "The Chicago Tribune". 



MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 



BY 

V. BLASCO IBANEZ 

AUTHOB OF "the FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALTPSB," 

"MABB NOSTRUM," "WOMAN TRIUMPHANT," 

ETC., ETC. 



TRANSLATED BY 

ARTHUR LIVINGSTON 

AND 

JOSE PADIN 




NEW YORK 
B. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
681 FIFTH AVENUE . 



Copyright, 1920, bt 
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 



AU Rights Reserved 



ftrri printing June. 



Printed in the United States ot Ametiett 

JUL 14 1920 



'Ul 



A570672 



AUTHOE'S NOTE 

The various articles in this volume were 
written, on my return from Mexico, for the "New 
^Tork Times, the Chicago Tribune and other im- 
portant newspapers in the United States. 

When I began my articles, the revolution 
which finally overthrew Carranza had not yet 
triumphed and ''the old man" was still alive. 
Events moved rapidly while the articles were 
coming out. Carranza was assassinated and 
Obregon, with the militarist party, came into 
power. 

Works of the moment, these articles record 
my various impressions of the days during 
which they were written. They do not, in con- 
sequence, show the unity and homogeneity of 
a book written after the fact on events already 
complete in themselves and easily appreciable 
to the person observing them in perspective 
and as a whole. 

I might, of course, have remodeled these 
articles and reduced them to chapter form. I 



vi AUTHOR'S NOTE 

miglit have suppressed some paragraphs to 
avoid repetitions and added others to fill in 
the completed picture. I finally decided to 
leave them exactly as they appeared in the 
press, with all their spontaneity as works of 
the moment. 

They do not contain all that I have to say on 
the Mexico of the present. They are simple 
impressions, hastily and incompletely jotted 
down as circumstances warranted or required. 
I regard them as the first shots on the skirmish 
line, before my real battle, with all my heavy 
guns in action, begins. 

The final results of my observation and study 
on contemporary Mexico I shall give, with 
greater amplitude and more attentive art, in 
my forthcoming novel called *'The Eagle and 
the Snake." 

Vicente Blasco Ibanez. 

New York, June 20, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Cause oe the Revolution ... 1 

11. The Sad Story OF Flor De Te ... 21 

III. "Citizen" Obregon 49 

IV. The Real Author o© Carranza's 

Downfall 74 

V. Carranza's Official Family ... 98 

VI. Condition of the Country .... 124 

VII. The Generals 148 

VIII. The Mexican Army . . . . . . 171 

IX. Mexico's Ominous Silence . . , . 191 

X, Mexico and the United States . . 219 



MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 



MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 



I. THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION 

I AM just back from Mexico, where I spent a 
month and a half. In this brief period of 
time I made the acquaintance of a Government 
that looked strong and seemed destined to reach 
the end of its constitutional days peacefully; I 
witnessed the outbreak of a revolution that in its 
early stages led a languid life; I saw the de- 
cisive triumph of this revolution, brought about 
by the unexpected assistance of political ele- 
ments that had seemed out of sympathy with it ; 
and I observed, finally, the flight of President 
Carranza, the present uncertainty concerning 
his fate, and the still greater uncertainty re- 
garding the probable future of the new Gov- 
ernment in process of formation. 

After all, there is nothing extraordinary in 
this vertiginous movement of events. Of all 
things Mexican, revolutions move with the 
greatest velocity. 



2 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

I went to Mexico to gather material for a 
novel that I intend to entitle ''The Eagle and 
the Snake." Among my notes there is a statis- 
tical table showing the number of governments 
that Mexico has had since it secured its inde- 
pendence. In less than a hundred years — be- 
ginning with 1821 — the Republic of Mexico has 
been served by seventy-two different govern- 
ments. Now, with the fall of the Carranza re- 
gime, the record stands at seventy-three, with 
time to spare before the century closes. Leav- 
ing aside the thirty years of Porfirio Diaz's 
rule we find that the average life of each gov- 
ernment has been approximately one year. 

In this series of articles I am going to tell 
what I saw and what I heard in Mexico. I am 
going to give the American public, in advance, 
a small portion of the observations I made for 
"The Eagle and the Snake.'' These will be 
simply the impressions of a novelist, of an im- 
partial observer. I had ample opportunity to 
talk to Carranza, as well as to his bitterest ene- 
mies, and I was able to get their conflicting 
views. I am grateful to both sides for many 
courtesies received, but I hold no brief for 
either party. If there is any group that has 



THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION 3 

won my sympathy it is tlie Mexican people, 
the eternal victim of a tragi-comedy that never 
©nds, the poor slave whom all pretend to re- 
deem and whose lot has remained unchanged 
for centuries, the everlasting dupe whom the 
redeemers shower with fine phrases, never 
telling him the truth because the truth is fre- 
quently cruel. 

Carranza's Craft Inspired District 

I had several fairly intimate talks with Presi- 
dent Carranza and I am in a position to state 
what the underlying motive of his policy was 
in the last days of his regime. I am fully aware 
of the fact that Carranza is not one of those 
men who can be easily probed. Accustomed to 
the politics of a country where dissimulation 
is one of the best practical virtues, it is no easy 
task to sound him. Suffice it to say that when 
Don Venustiano receives a visitor, the first 
thing he does, by instinct, is to back his chair 
against the nearest window. By this simple 
maneuver he places himself in a semi-darkness 
so that his body becomes a silhouette from 
which the face stands out like a faint white 
spot. In this posture he cannot be observed 



4 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

closely, while he, on the other hand, can scruti- 
nize at pleasure the face of his visitor which 
remains exposed to the full flood of light 
streaming through the window. When some- 
thing arrests his attention, Carranza has a way 
of peering over the rim of his light blue spec- 
tacles. It was this very trick which made the 
rustic Pancho Villa suspicious of Carranza and 
led the former to exclaim on one occasion: 
''There's nothing the matter with Carranza's 
eyes. He has very good sight and doesn't need 
spectacles. He wears them to shade his eyes 
and hide his thoughts better. ' ' 

But the reader must not infer from this that 
Carranza is a sort of shrewd tyrant of awe- 
some aspect. Don Venustiano is an old coun- 
try gentleman, a ranchman, with all the cun- 
ning of rural landowners and all the shrewd- 
ness of county politicians, but he is simpatico 
and has a noble bearing. Despite his apparent 
reserve, at times he waxes loquacious, "feels 
like a student" — as he puts it — and then he 
talks freely; he even laughs. 



THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION 5 

His Hostility to Militarism 

Carranza's fall was due to his stubborn at- 
tempt to pursue an anti-military policy. 

This old chieftain of the revolutionary arm- 
ies, who, though bom in the country, is more 
warlike than many of his Generals bred in the 
cities, would never permit any one to give him 
the title of Greneral. Knowing, undoubtedly, 
that the chief trouble with Mexico is the incur- 
able eruption of Generals with which the re- 
public is afflicted, he did not care to add an- 
other boil to the diseased body of the nation 
by assuming the title of General. 

His followers always referred to him as the 
''First Chief"; they never called him General. 
During his campaigns Carranza wore the uni- 
form of a buck private. 

Now, on the eve of his retirement from office, 
he took part more or less directly in the Presi- 
dential campaign and he used his influence to 
bring about the election of a civilian. 

"The trouble with Mexico," he told me in an 
interview, ''has always been, and still is, mili- 
tarism. Few of our Presidents have been men 
drawn from civil life; always Generals. And 



6 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

what Generals! . . . No, this thing has got to 
stop for the good of Mexico. My successor 
ought to be a civilian, a man of modern views 
and progressive ideas, capable of preserving 
domestic peace and directing the economic de- 
velopment of the nation. It is time that my 
country should begin to live the healthy, normal 
life which other nations enjoy." 

The ideal cherished by Carranza could not 
be more praiseworthy, but at the same time 
nothing could be more absurd and dangerous 
than the means employed by him to carry out 
his plan. Therefore, while I applaud his views 
on militarism, I applaud also his downfall. 

For President, the Unknown Bonillas 

To invest the Presidency of the republic with 
the civil character that befits it, it would have 
been necessary to choose a candidate of emi- 
nent qualities, a man with a long record of dis- 
tinguished public service, a man of unques- 
tioned popularity. And what did Carranza do ? 
He did precisely the very opposite thing. He 
selected one of the most obscure of Mexicans. 
He hit upon Senor Bonillas, his Ambassador 
at Washington, a man who has spent most of 



THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION 7 

his life away from Ms native land and who 
even married abroad. 

There is another important factor in the situ- 
ation: the character of the Carranza govern- 
ment in the closing days of its regime. 

I am well aware of the fact that when a revo- 
lutionary party triumphs in a C4)untry like 
Mexico dissensions are hound to occur in its 
ranks eventually; these dissensions are inevit- 
able. The ''deserving patriots^' are legion! 
They all want their reward, and the country 
does not have enough wealth to go around and 
satisfy every appetite. The lucrative offices 
are few in number and there are dozens of can- 
didates who consider themselves competent to 
fill them. 

There is, moreover, a situation peculiar to 
Mexico. In every country one can find the 
disinterested revolutionary type, the ascetic 
agitator who expects to get from revolu- 
tion only the ideal satisfaction of victory. Of 
course, in every revolutionary movement there 
are shameless self-seekers, but together with 
these there are noble and disinterested vision- 
aries who sacrifice themselves for the common 
good and who, after the triumph of their doo- 



8 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

trines, continue to live like real saints, feed- 
ing on the bread and water of their enthusiasm. 
Among the Mexicans who occupied the high- 
est public offices after the revolution I searched 
in vain for the Don Quixote, for the type that 
appeared in the French and Russian revolu- 
tions, the disinterested patriot who thriiks only 
of the common weal without regard to his own 
advantage. I failed to find him. Those I met 
are men of hard practical sense who never lose 
sight of personal profit. 

Revolutionaries Usually Rich 

I was surprised to see the large number of 
rich revolutionaries in Mexico. There may be 
some poor revolutionaries in Mexico — I hope 
there are some, for in my own country I was 
once a poor revolutionary — ^but if there are any 
such in Mexico their number is so scarce that 
they can be counted on the fingers of one hand, 
with some fingers to spare. 

The majority of those revolutionaries are 
undoubtedly the sons of millionaires. They 
claim that before the revolution they were sim- 
ple peons, ambulant vendors, subordinate em- 
ployees, or mere vagabonds. Such claims must 



THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION 

be forced attempts on their part to hide their 
influential origin and so to flatter the popular 
masses. If what they say were true, their 
present wealth conld be explained only by some 
unexpected inheritance recently received from 
relatives who had heretofore ignored them. 
Otherwise it would be utterly impossible to un- 
derstand how men who six or seven years ago 
were ambulant milk dealers, vendors of dry 
vegetables or Mexican hats, hungry rural school 
teachers or mail carrriers, can honestly have ac- 
quired fortunes estimated at several millions of 
dollars, especially since these men have wasted 
considerable time in revolution. It is equally 
difficult to explain how so many wives of Gen- 
erals and Colonels who half a dozen years ago 
were poor women of the peon class, how so 
many lady friends of Generals and Colonels, 
are now able to display expensive jewelry which 
remind people of the gems bought years ago 
by the leading Mexican families now in exile. 

But let us not insist on these details. Suffice 
it to say that the prominent leaders of the Mex- 
ican revolution made the revolution for a fixed 
purpose. They do not understand sacrifice for 
the common good. Carranza had to consoli- 



10 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

date his new Government. After the first few 
years he was forced to limit the number of his 
favorites; whereupon those who were left out- 
side of the golden shower of his favors became 
the bitter enemies of the First Chief. 

When I observed closely the inner circle of 
intimate friends who gathered around Carranza 
in his Presidential palace I was struck by their 
youth. The respectable Don Venustiano, vv^ith 
his white beard and light blue spectacles, looked 
like the head master of a boarding school for 
boys. Generals of 27 and grave Ministers of 
29 or 30 followed with veneration and gratitude 
the old First Chief. 

The Young Adonis Who Ruled 

In reality, one of these youths was the real 
ruler of the Mexican Republic during the last 
few years, the real power behind the throne, 
Juan Barragan, a General 27 years old, the 
chief of Carranza 's staff. 

Those who had a petition to make would im- 
mediately think, "I shall have to see Juanito 
Barragan about this.'* 

On account of his youth and amiable charac- 
ter everybody spoke of Barragan as Juanito 



THE CAUSE OP THE REVOLUTION 11 

C Johnny") Barragan. A simple law student 
and the son of a well-to-do family, he followed 
Don Venustiano when the latter rose against 
Hnerta. President Carranza always showed a 
certain weakness for this youth, who accom- 
panied him everywhere as a beautiful and deco- 
rative adjunct to the Presidential entourage. 

"The Handsomest Man in the World" 

It has been stated recently that Barragan 
was executed by the revolutionaries of Mexico 
after Carranza 's flight. I hope the rumor is 
not true. Why kill him? He was the Apollo 
of the revolution. Tall, handsome, arrogant 
despite his childlike features, the girls of Mex- 
ico consider him the best looking man in the re- 
public — ^in fact, in the entire world. He was 
almost a national glory and received honors ac- 
cordingly. With the bright blue of his uniform 
and his gold braid he was a dazzling sight. He 
seemed to have just stepped out of a toy box, 
freshly varnished. He bought himself a new 
uniform every week. Twenty-seven years of 
age, fine health, an amiable character — and 
master of Mexico ! 

His enemies said that he owned a whole row 



12 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

of houses in the principal avenue of Mexico 
City. Impossible ! He could not have had any 
money left for such investments after throwing 
it away by the handful as he did. During the 
last few years it has been a fine business for 
singers and actresses to go to Mexico ! Thanks 
to the amiable Chief of Staff, an actress could 
visit Mexico and return to her native land with 
savings amounting to one or two hundred thou- 
sand dollars. 

Barragan's power extended even to the uni- 
versity. During my visit to Mexico the Gov- 
ernment assigned me to that institution, which 
was invited to entertain me and direct my ex- 
cursions over the country. This courtesy did 
not surprise me. "It is because I am a writer," 
I thought. But shortly before I left Mexico, 
through the indiscretion of a functionary, I dis- 
covered that a certain famous foreign dancer 
had also been consigned to the university dur- 
ing her journey in Mexico a year before. Was 
I offended? Of course not! It was the doing 
of the amiable Barragan. Se received all pe- 
titioners with a bountiful generosity, as though 
he would die rather than fail to serve them. He 
never said no to any one. He was capable of 



THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION 13 

surrendering Don Venustiano 's head if lie was 
asked for it with real insistence. And Car- 
ranza, plain in dress, grave in appearance, a 
man of strict morals and clean life, when he 
observed the elegant uniform and the gold braid 
of his Chief of Staff, seemed to rejoice as 
though he were contemplating his own image 
in a looking-glass. On other occasions, when 
the President would hear of Barragan's suc- 
cesses with the ladies, he would smile with the 
delight of a kindly grandfather. 

"Johnny" Briefly Defends Republic 

I left Mexico City without bidding adieu to 
the Apollo of the revolution. His Excellency, 
General Don Juan Barragan, was spending 
whole days with the telephone receiver at his 
ear, giving orders, with his eyes fixed on the 
map of Mexico. The followers of Obregon had 
already taken the field, and "the handsomest 
Mexican," as the marriageable seiioritas and 
visiting actresses say, had just assumed the 
duties of a strategist and was busy directing 
the movements of the Federal troops. 

Poor and amiable boyl I can see now why 
the Carranza regime collapsed so readily. 



14 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Bouillas, Carranza's Unfortunate Choice 

The real and immediate cause of Carranza^s 
downfall was his obstinate attempt to impose 
upon the country the Presidential candidacy of 
Bonillas. If it had not occurred to him to in- 
sist on this solution and had he allowed the 
Presidential campaign to follow its natural 
course, letting Generals Obregon and Pablo 
Gonzalez fight it out, he might have completed 
his Presidential term in peace. And he would 
probably be revered as an idol to-day by his old 
subordinates. 

The reader will probably ask why Carranza 
hit upon a candidacy so unpopular as that of 
Senor Bonillas. To answer this I can offer 
only conjectures, or rather I must repeat what 
I heard in Mexico. 

As the majority of Mexicans are firmly con- 
vinced that Carranza is a tricky politician, be- 
cause of his reserve and deep-laid machinations, 
they give the following explanation of his con- 
duct in the Bonillas affair : 

Bonillas was to be a mere tool in the hands of 
Don Venustiano. He had selected him for his 
very insignificance — because he did not belong 



THE CAUSE OP THE REVOLUTION 15 

to any party and because he was wholly un- 
known in the country. Bonillas would thus owe 
his position entirely to his protector and would 
not be likely to darse la vuelta contra el — 
in the language of the country, or as the Eng- 
lish say, to bite the hand that fed him. 

This business of darse la vuelta is a Mexican 
game which must be taken into account, for the 
country is a famous hotbed of political treason 
and there is always fear that the friend of to- 
day may become the enemy of to-morrow. If 
you help some one to get along in the world 
in Mexico you are almost sure soon to receive 
a kick from him. He will boot you to show his 
self-respect and independence. 

With the unknown Senor Bonillas there was 
no occasion to fear such a kick. A creature of 
Carranza, he would remain faithful to his chief 
and he would continue to surround himself with 
a circle of friends selected by his protector to 
be his advisers and guardians. 

Shortsighted critics did not attribute this 
purpose to Carranza. They thought that the 
candidacy of Bonillas was a stratagem invented 
for the occasion. 

*'We know the vie jo harhon," they said, al- 



16 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

luding to Carranza's white beard. "He has 
launched the candidacy of Bonillas for the mere 
purpose of irritating Obregon. Obregon will 
rise against the Government and a long war 
will follow. Carranza will then declare that it 
is impossible to hold elections and will continue 
in the Presidency indefinitely.'* 

Carranza as a Second Diaz 

Others, more farsighted, came nearer to the 
truth, in my judgment, when they discussed the 
situation. 

"Carranza," they said, "really wishes to be 
succeeded in the Presidency by Bonillas. Un- 
der the direction of Carranza and with a legis- 
lature composed of Carranza deputies, Car- 
ranza will see to it that the Constitution is re- 
vised, eliminating the article which forbids the 
reelection of the President. After the article 
is eliminated Don Venustiano will become Pres- 
ident again and he will get himself reelected in- 
definitely. ' * 

The method is not new. Porfirio Diaz did 
that very thing. He began his political career 
by rising against the reelection of Presidents, 
and after he became the Chief Magistrate of 



THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION 17 

the republic he yielded the place for a brief 
period to one of his own henchmen, had his own 
Constitution amended, and thus opened the way; 
for his thirty-year rule. 

I believe that Carranza really wanted Bo- 
nillas to succeed him, but I cannot refrain from 
judging that in this Don Venustiano rendered 
his protege a very poor service. 

Of all the personages who figure in this last 
Mexican revolution Bonillas is the man who in- 
spires my deepest sympathy on account of his 
misfortune. His role has been that of certain 
good though simple-minded characters of the 
comedy who inevitably pay for the faults of 
others, and who, despite their reluctance to get 
mixed up in quarrels, receive all the blows. 

Why did they not leave him alone? He was 
living so peacefully in Washington as the diplo- 
matic representative of Mexico! His post 
seemed destined to become perpetual. If Ob- 
regon were to succeed Carranza the Oeneral 
would surely keep Bonillas as American Am- 
bassador, because they are both from Sonora 
and have been friends since their childhood. 
No matter who might be elected President, 
Bonillas would be kept in his post, respected as 



18 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

a good man who serves his country the best he 
knows how, and who, residing abroad, could 
hold completely aloof from all domestic politi- 
cal quarrels. 

But, alas ! Don Venustiano conceived the un- 
happy idea of selecting Bonillas as his succes- 
sor and of stirring the Ambassador's ambition, 
dragging him away from the sweet environment 
of his family and the noble tranquillity of 
Washington. 

Viva Bonillas, the "Tea Flower"! 

Ten months ago the Mexicans were unaware 
of the existence of Bonillas. A few knew that 
a gentleman by that name lived in the capital 
of the United States, and they even suspected 
that he had done great things for Mexico, al- 
though they were not quite sure what those 
things were. 

And, lo! all of a sudden the Government 
launches the name of this man — a name that 
arouses no echo in public opinion — as if Bonil- 
las were a providential personage, destined to 
save the country. 

The people of Mexico City have a keen sense 
of humor and show a veritable genius for in- 



THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION 19 

venting nicknames. Moreover, the Spanish 
zarzuela companies, the experts in light and 
comio opera, play a great deal in the theaters 
of the Mexican capital, so that the public of 
that city has acquired the same keenness for 
repartee which characterizes the people of the 
popular quarters of Madrid. 

Among the songs written for the zarzuela 
theaters of Madrid there is one which has be- 
come extremely popular and is sung in all the 
theaters and music halls of the Spanish- Ameri- 
can countries. The song tells the story of a 
poor shepherd girl who has been abandoned and 
wanders over the face of the earth, not know- 
ing where she was born nor who her parents 
were. She knows nothing about herself except 
her nickname, which is Flor de Te, or ''Tea 
Flower." 

The malicious people of Mexico City imme- 
diately rechristened the Garranza candidate 
who had come from foreign parts, the candidate 
who came nobody knew whence and who was 
going no one knew whither. 

Viva Bonillas! Viva Flor de Te! Hurray 
for Bonillas ! Hurray for * ' Tea Flower ' ' ! 

And from that moment everybody lost re- 



20 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

spect for Don Venustiano 's whiskers and for 
the terrifying face lie puts on when he is in bad 
humor. 

In the next article I shall relate the tragi- 
comic incidents through which was born, gi-ew 
and died the candidacy of ''Flor de Te" — the 
immediate cause of the revolution. 



n. THE SAD STORY OF FLOE DE TE 

ONILLAS, the candidate picked by Car- 
ranza to succeed him in the Presidency of 
the Eepublic, is a man who has spent the great- 
er part of his life away from Mexico. Early 
in his youth he left his native country and wan- 
dered into several of the American Southern 
States, trying his hand at various jobs in an 
effort to make an honest living and managing 
to eke out the precarious existence of a worker 
who is frequently forced to change both resi- 
dence and occupation. Later, when he was no 
longer in his teens, he studied engineering in 
the Boston Institute of Technology. 

When Garranza rose against Huerta, Bonil- 
las returned to Mexico and took part in the 
revolution. His record as a fighting man, how- 
ever, was not brilliant. He even failed to be- 
come a General. He merely served as an engi- 
neer, marching in the rear of the revolution- 
ary army with the obscure civilians who looked 

21 



22 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

after the administrative affairs of the new re- 
gime. 

After the triumph of the revolution, Car- 
ranza, who needed to send to Washington a 
loyal representative willing to obey instruc- 
tions explicitly, selected Bonillas. The ap- 
pointee knew English better than his native 
tongue and he had been educated in the States 
— qualifications, these, which gave him a deci- 
sive advantage over all the other aspirants to 
the post of Ambassador to the United States. 
And he remained in this position throughout 
the entire administration of Carranza, until the 
latter conceived the notion of naming Bonillas 
his heir to the Presidential chair. 

LaugMng Down the Candidate 

I have told, in a preceding article, how the 
people of Mexico City, surprised at the candi- 
dacy of the unknown Bonillas, gave him the 
nickname of "Flor de Te" (Tea Flower). At 
first they called him Bonillas ''Tea Flower, ' 
because no one knew who he was. Later on his 
enemies claimed they knew his past in its mi-, 
nute details, and poor Senor Bonillas became 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOR DE TE 23 

something worse than the little shepherd girl of 
the Spanish song. 

A campaign of truth and falsehood was 
launched by the enemies of his candidacy, with 
the vociferous approval of all those who were 
willing to jeer at anything to irritate Carranza. 
According to them, Bonillas's name was not 
Bonillas at all. He was not even a Mexican. 
His real name was Stanford, and he had 
been born in the United States. Bonillas was 
the name of his mother, whose blood was the 
only Mexican blood that ran in the candidate's 
veins. And the sympathizers of Bonillas 
(friends of Carranza, public employees and sol- 
diers) would publish the genealogy of the Bo- 
nillas family, beginning with the founder of the 
line — a carpenter who came from Spain when 
Mexico was still a Spanish colony. 

According to his opponents, the Presidential 
candidate could not speak Spanish. Every 
morning the opposition press published stories 
about Bonillas in which he was featured as talk- 
ing Spanish and so altering the construction 
and meaning of his words as to say the most 
shocking things. 



24 MEXICO IN REVOLUnOM 

A Gallo for the Visitor 

I myself served indirectly as a pretext for 
this slanderous propaganda. "When a popular 
foreigner arrives in Mexico the university stu- 
dents generally treat him with a gallo. A 
gallo is a night procession, with torchlights, 
something between a serenade and a masquer- 
ade. It marches past the balcony of the house 
where the honored guest is lodged ; and the stu- 
dents, mounted on horseback or riding in auto- 
mobiles decked with flowers and flags, or on 
trucks artistically converted into allegorical 
chariots, sing, shout and make laudatory or 
burlesque speeches to the guest of honor; and 
the public, invited by the college boys, joins 
the parade, with more carriages and bands of 
music. 

I was treated to several gallos. The one 
given me in Mexico City was enormous, more 
than 15,000 persons taking part in it. The 
noisy nocturnal procession, including some 
long stops took two hours to march past the 
Hotel Regis, where I was stopping, occupying 
a room next to that of Bonillas. The candidate 
for the Presidency was not to be found in the 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOS DE TE 25 

hotel at that time. He had decided to avoid a 
face-to-face meeting with that youthful and dis- 
respectful crowd, which at sight of him would 
be sure to make some insulting remarks. 

First came Don Quixote and his squire, 
Sancho Panza ; next the Four Horsemen of the 
Apocalypse ; and finally a large number of girls, 
dressed to represent the various Spanish prob- 
vincial types. But no one gave a thought to 
*'Flor de Te." Of course, we were in Mexico 
City, and Don Venustiano was near at hand. 
The horses of the mounted police kept prancing 
between the carriages in the parade. 

Another with a Political Turn 

A few days later the students of the Univer- 
sity of Puebla gave me another gallo. Car- 
ranza was not at hand there. Among the groups 
of masks on horseback and the carriages with 
allegories of Spain and the Spanish-American 
republics there was a simple little coach, drawn 
by one horse and Avithout any decoration what- 
ever. Nevertheless, it was the chief attraction 
of the parade. It was occupied by a young 
student attired in an extravagantly checkered 
suit, the traditional costume used in all the the- 



26 MEXICO IN KEVOLUTION 

aters of Spanish-speaking countries to repre- 
sent the conventional Englishman. The mask 
that covered his face made the crowd hilarious. 

''Flor de Te! Hurrah for Flor de Te!'' 
shouted the people, crowding around the coach. 
And when the procession filed past the bal- 
conies of my hotel the youth stood up, and with 
great solemnity began to greet me in a nasal 
tone and with the halting speech of one who is 
not master of the language he is trying to use. 

''Meester Bonillas," said the mask, ''greets 
Meester Ibanez, whose works he has read trans- 
lated into English. Within a few months, per- 
haps, Meester Bonillas will be able to read them 
in the original, because he is now studying the 
language of the country. ' ' 

Made Mme. Bonillas a Lutheran 

This is not true. I chatted with Senor Bo- 
nillas on more than one occasion while we were 
guests together in the same hotel, and I found 
that he is essentially similar to all his compatri- 
ots and can speak Spanish like the rest of them. 

But, of course, he could not prevent the ex- 
travagant fabrications of his political adver- 
saries. Every day they unearthed a new "se- 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOE DE TE 27 

oret" from the past of the candidate supported 
by Carranza. 

"Bonillas has been an American citizen for 
many years," they would spring one day. ''Bo- 
nillas, during his adventurous career in the 
States bordering on the Mexican frontier, was 
even the Sheriff of a small town. ' ' 

The candidate's family did not escape this 
hostile scrutiny. It was announced one day 
that Senor Bonillas had married a distin- 
guished lady of English nationality and be- 
longing to the Lutheran Church. Her daugh- 
ters professed the same faith and were not 
Catholics ! Horrors ! 

We must bear in mind that the bitterest 
enemies of Bonillas are men without any re- 
ligious faith whatsoever. Some even distin- 
guished themselves during the revolution by 
unnecessary acts of cruelty against Catholic 
priests. One of Obregon's Generals, perhaps 
his most intimate friend, in the first days after 
the triumph of the revolution, made a number 
of priests and friars, whom he considered ene- 
mies of the new regime, sweep the streets of the 
capital. Moreover, he filled several cattle cars 
with priests and sent them from Mexico City to 



28 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

Vera Cruz, making them go without food dur- 
ing the five days that the trip lasted. Despite 
this, the loudest protests against the religious 
faith of the Bonillas family came from some of 
these enemies who fear neither God nor devil. 

''What an insult to Mexican women, who 
are all Catholics," they said. "To think of a 
Protestant being the first lady of the land ! * ' 

Propaganda for Bonillas 

The reader must not infer from the foregoing 
that the candidate supported by Carranza and 
his numerous friends did nothing to counteract 
this hostile propaganda. 

In reality, Bonillas himself could not do very 
much. He adapted his personal conduct to the 
trend of events and followed the suggestions 
of his protector. But the Bonillas Campaign 
Committee, composed of Carranza Generals, 
Senators and Deputies loyal to the cause, 
worked with an energy never equaled in Mex- 
ico. 

I must confess that I have rarely seen a pub- 
licity campaign more enormous and better or- 
ganized than that which advertised the name of 
Bonillas over the whole republic. 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOE DE TE 29 

Wlien I reached Mexico, a few days later than 
the Carranza candidate, I could not hide my 
surprise as I crossed the international bridge 
and entered the frontier town of Nuevo Laredo. 
Low, adobe houses ! Groups of men with enor- 
mous hats, as broad as umbrellas, sunning 
themselves with imperturbable gravity ! Streets 
with deep holes, over which my automobile 
bounced, groaning with iron anguish ! And on 
this gray and monotonous background, which 
has remained unaltered for fifty years, a great 
variety of paper signs, of all colors and sizes, 
posted on the doors, on the mud walls, and 
even on the ox carts standing in the plazas. 

Everywhere the portrait of a man, Bonillas, 
unknown yesterday, and to-day converted over- 
night into a national Messiah by the will of an- 
other man living over there in a city of the 
Mexican plateau! This portrait bore under- 
neath it flattering promises: "Democracy,'* 
"Peace." No less numerous were the printed 
statements couched in pompous and verbose 
language to impress the gullible and supersti- 
tious rural masses, a majority of whom are 
illiterate. 



30 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Skilful Posters That Failed 

Later, as I penetrated farther into the inte- 
rior, I observed how the Bonillas propaganda 
grew in intensity from one station to another, 
until I reached Mexico City, where it became 
a wild orgy of publicity. Huge posters, many 
meters long, advised the people in enormous 
letters to vote for Bonillas. Every open lot, 
and every old house, was covered with signs: 
''Bonillas represents the death of militarism!" 
' ' If you want to see the end of revolution, vote 
for Bonillas." As you walked about the streets, |j| 
your eye would be caught by large, red arrows 
pointing to something farther on. And if you 
followed their direction, you would meet Bonil- 
las 's name a few hundred yards ahead. At 
night the picture of the candidate could be seen 
illuminated by indirect light and smiling upon 
you from some balcony. 

This obsessing propaganda, which met you 
everywhere, must have been the work of some 
old hand at the business. Many people said 
that the partisans of Bonillas had imported a 
clever publicity expert from the United States. 

Occasionally your attention would be arrested 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOR DE TE 31 

by a printed bill posted on the walls with great 
profusion. The casual transient, even if he did 
not take sides in the political campaign, felt 
drawn by the novelty of the document. "The 
Defects of the Engineer Bonillas. " * ' What the 
Engineer Bonillas Lacks ! " 

Extravagance That Hurt Carranza 

"Well," you would say, "it's high time some 
one . said something against this much-praised 
man. ' ' 

But from the very first lines of the document 
you discovered that the defects of Bonillas were 
that he was not a trouble-making General like 
the "others," but a man of peace and honest 
labor ; and the only things lacking in his record 
were the executions and dragonades so numer- 
ous in the history of his rivals. ^ 

This extraordinarily expensive publicity, the 
like of which had never been seen in Mexico, 
could not possibly have been financed by Bonil- 
las. His Campaign Committee paid, but com- 
posed as this committee was of men who had 
always lived on the national budget, it is not 
likely that the members made any personal sac- 
rifices. In short, everybody believed that Car- 



32 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

ranza was defraying tlie campaign expenses of 
Bonillas and tliat he was doing it with public 
funds. 

This system of propaganda was, at the same 
time, an indirect means of corruption. All the 
great Mexican dailies, even those that were 
hostile to the candidate, sold whole pages of 
advertising space to the Bonillas committee 
and the editors thought they were saving their 
consciences by inserting a line at the foot of the 
page stating that it had been bought and paid 
for at advertising rates by the Bonillas party. 
The net result of this was that the papers car- 
ried in their news columns a few brief lines of 
criticism against the Government candidate and 
in the rest of the edition pictures of Bonillas 
and his friends and long articles praising th© 
candidate and his policies. 

Millions Spent in Vain 

How much was spent in this campaign? 

The sympathizers of General Obregon and 
Pablo Gonzalez state positively that Carranza 
had already used $2,000,000 popularizing his 
candidate, and that he was disposed to spend a 
great deal more if it became necessary. 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOR DE TE 33 

The need of incurring these extravagant ex- 
penditures is even more difficult to justify than 
the merits of the candidate Bonillas. 

The mountainous heaps of printed paper, the 
hundreds of thousands of photographs and the 
miles of advertisements were wholly useless as 
aids in a Presidential election in Mexico. To 
use the election methods of a modern, politi- 
cally matured country in poor Mexico, the eter- 
nal victim of all sorts of tyrannies, is ahout as 
effective as importing sewing machines into a 
country where cloth is unknown. What is the 
use of such publicity in a country that has never 
gone to the polls? 

The Mexican people, in reality, does not 
know what an election means. During the long 
period of his rule Porfirio Diaz always re- 
elected himself. Until the unfortunate Madero 
turned up, no one dared to protest against the 
practice. 

Before Porfirio Diaz's time the way to power 
led along the path of revolution, or else the 
elections were so scandalously immoral that 
they provoked and justified uprisings. Since 
the close of the Diaz regime the present elec- 
tion was the first in the history of Mexico sohed- 



34 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

uled to be carried on in a modem way. We have 
seen how it developed into a revohition. 

The great propaganda in favor of Bonillas 
seemed ridiculous, and at times ironically sad, 
especially when we consider the character of the 
country. So much printed paper for a poor 
people in great part illiterate, owing to the neg- 
lect of its rulers! So much electioneering, 
when every voter knew that his preference 
counted for nothing and that in the end the 
candidate backed by the Government would win 
out! . . . 

To vote conscientiously, the elector must have 
the conviction that his vote will be respected, 
that it will mean something. In Mexico the 
man who casts his ballot knows that he is exer- 
cising a useless right. The result will always 
be what the party in power decides. More- 
over, the privilege of voting is a dangerous 
function. If the man in power gets wind of the 
fact that the voter is trying to be independent 
and think with his own head, the voter is soon 
brought to his senses ! 

Obregon and Gonzalez are right when they 
justify their uprising with the statement that 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOR DE TE 35 

the Government had denied their candidacies 
the guarantees of security and fair play. It 
is true. Carranza, who is a stubborn man, in- 
capable of budging an inch after he has once 
made up his mind, had decided that Bonillas 
should win, and Bonillas would have been the 
next President of Mexico, if the revolution had 
not broken out. All the States that had Car- 
ranza Governors would have voted en masse for 
Bonillas, as though there were no followers of 
the other candidates there at all. 

But Obregon and Gonzalez are no saints; 
they were not bom yesterday, and they cer- 
tainly are not political infants. Their record 
is almost as long and brilliant as that of Don 
Venustiano and no one knows what they will 
each cook up when the elections are announced 
again. 

What can we expect from a country when it 
has never had an electoral body considered and 
respected as a vital and permanent institution? 
What can we expect from a country where the 
defeated candidate always resorts to arms, 
claiming that he has been defrauded? 

If the elections prepared by Carranza had 



36 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

taken place Bonillas would have won in all the 
Carranza States. But Obregon, for instance, 
who controlled the Government of the State of 
Sonora, would have received every single vote 
cast there, and Bonillas, who was also born in 
that State, would not have received a ballot. 

It is possible that real elections may be held 
in Mexico in the future. Why should we not 
be optimistic about it? But up to the present 
time no candidate has ever failed to coerce the 
national will by voting the people in his own 
favor wherever and whenever he has had a 
chance. And his opponents have done the same 
thing, under similar conditions. 

The Leper and the Flies 

The candidacy of Bonillas, however, had a 
strength of its own, aside from that received 
from the Government. This strength was the 
war-weariness of a certain class of people — per- 
haps the class most worthy of sympathy — the 
small merchants and poorer landowners, the 
lower middle class, which has been suffering the 
effects of an endless revolution for ten years. 
I heard the complaints of this class. I visited 
some Mexican cities where this element is pre- 



THE SAB STORY OF FLOR DE TE 37 

ponderant and saw its e:fforts to live in peace 
and keep out of the everlasting turmoil. 

Elections had come again to disturb the rela- 
tive quiet to which these people had recently 
become accustomed. 

''Why should we hold elections?" some one 
would ask me. ' ' It would be better to have Don 
Venustiano continue in office. I don't like him. 
But he is in already and that is preferable to 
starting all over again with a new one. ' ' 

Many of these people told the old story of the 
leper which some of my American readers, per- 
haps, do not know. 

A good Mussulman takes pity on a leper 
whpm he sees sitting motionless on the ground 
with his sores covered with flies. To alleviate 
the suffering of the stricken man, the good Sa- 
maritan drives away the parasites. But the 
leper, instead of thanking his benefactor, goes 
into a rage and heaps abuse upon him for his 
officiousness. 

"Why art thou treating me as if I were the 
worst of thine enemies'?" the leper cries. ''The 
flies thou hast driven away were already satis- 
fied. They were full of my substance and I 
could endure them. But now they will be sue- 



38 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

ceeded by other flies of ravenous appetite and 
my torments will begin again. Curses upon 
thine head!'* 

A portion of the Mexican people had resigned 
themselves to endure the torment of the well- 
fed Carranza flies. These people did not like 
Carranza, but they accepted the successor 
picked by him because they knew that Carran- 
za 's successor and his friends would prove less 
voracious than the flies of any opposing party. 

"If the old man has to go," these people 
would say, "we'll take Bonillas. He hasn't 
done anything worth while, but neither has he 
done anything bad . . . and, at any rate, he is 
not a General." 

This business of being a General considerably 
worries every Mexican who has witnessed a 
revolution without being in it. 

When Bonillas Returned 

The entry of Bonillas into Mexico when he 
returned from Washington as the candidate of 
the Civil Party made many people predict the 
revolution which broke out a month later. Never 
was the homecoming of conquering hero pre- 
pared with greater care than that of the ob- 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOR DE TE 39 

scure Mexican-American engineer, converted 
by the revolution first into a diplomatic agent 
and later into a Presidential candidate. A spe- 
cial train full of admirers (many of whom had 
never seen him before, but who, nevertheless, 
already worshiped him) was dispatched by the 
Government to meet him at the frontier. Two 
boys with the rank of General had charge of all 
the arrangements, relieving Don Venustiano of 
this petty labor. General Montes — about 30 — 
perhaps the only one among the revolutionaries 
who hails from a military school, was the Pres- 
ident of the Comite Civilista assigned to re- 
ceive Bonillas, to accompany him, and fre- 
quently, to speak for him. General Barragaii, 
chief of the President's staff, organized the fes- 
tivities in Mexico City. He requisitioned all 
private automobiles not in use and mobilized all 
the officials and friends of the Government, con- 
centrating them in the capital. 

I heard protests from certain men of the rank 
and file of the Carranza forces about this tri- 
umphal reception. ''They ordered me," one 
said, 'Ho fill twenty automobiles with sympa- 
thizers of Bonillas. I signed a receipt for 
twenty cars, and when the time came for the 



40 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

parade they sent me only two. Wliat became 
of the other eighteen, which, undoubtedly, will 
appear as paid for, I don't know." 

Despite these insignificant slips the parade 
was splendid. An interminable line of carriages 
extended from the station to the lodgings of the 
candidate. There were hurrahs for Bonillas,' 
vociferous viva<s from members of the police 
force who appeared disguised in civilian clothes 
the better to hide the nature of their enthusi- 
asm. There were manifestations of approval 
and sympathy from all the humbler employees. 
Flowers were thrown by the basketful by the 
senoritas who were daughters of the function- 
aries. In short, there was a general stirring of 
the masses, who are always moved by the sound 
of music and the sight of unfurled flags, irre- 
spective of what the music and the flags stand 
for. 

Fiesta Spoiled by Obregon's Men 

But the followers of Obregon decided to take 
part in the fiesta. A group of Generals and 
Colonels who sympathize with the General went 
to meet the parade. 

These Mexican Generals created by the revo- 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOR DE TE 41 

lution are a set of aggressive, harebrained 
boys, brought into prominence by the abnormal 
condition of civil war ; boys who, to go from the 
parlor to the dining room of their homes, deem 
it necessary to put on a cartridge belt and a 
couple of automatic pistols. In a future article 
entitled ''The Generals" I shall describe this 
original and dangerous type. 

These warriors of the Obregon camp dis- 
turbed the triumphant entry of Bonillas with 
pranks worthy of college boys celebrating a 
great athletic victory. First they scattered 
handfuls of nails along the streets, which caused 
many a blowout and much delay. Then they 
pelted the solemn personages who rode in the 
carriages with sticky, ill-smelling projectiles. 
And when Bonillas and his staff appeared on 
the balcony to address the multitude the Obre- 
gonists threw balls of asafoetida and worse, 
which made the speakers cough and hem and 
even brought tears to the eyes of Flor de Te 
and his panegyrists. 

The Bonillas party found it a difficult task to 
address the people. The orators had to hold 
their noses with one hand, while they fanned 
the air with gestures from the other. And 



^ MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

when, under tMs handicap, General Candido 
Aguilar, the son-in-law of Carranza, began to 
expound, with military eloquence, the superi- 
ority of civilian rule and the necessity of sup- 
pressing militarism, his hostile brothers-in- 
arms gave up the offensive they had begun with 
ill-smelling ammunition and started another 
with foul language. 

In loud exclamations they inveighed against 
the virtue of the mothers of the men in Bo- 
nillas's party — ladies whom they had never 
seen — and finally the candidate and his parti- 
sans, tired of hearing themselves called sons of 
this and sons of that, appealed to the police, 
who were anxiously waiting for the word. And 
the disturbers of the meeting were hurried off 
to jail. 

Open Breach with Carranza 

From that moment things happened with 
great rapidity. Obregon, infected with an ora- 
torical fever, started through the States in a 
whirlwind campaign in favor of his candidacy. 
He did not mince words. *'If I am not elected 
President," he said, ''it will be because Don 
Venustiano has decided to block me at all costs. 



I 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOE DE TE 43 

But before I let that vie jo barton trick me out 
of the^Presidency, I shall take the field against 
him." 

And the bewhiskered old gentleman, who has 
a temper of his own, retaliated by sending the 
police to break up the meetings of the Obregon- 
istas and beat up their followers. Moreover, 
Carranza got hold of certain letters in which 
it appeared that Obregon was in alliance with 
the chiefs of certain bandit bands which had 
been defying the constituted authorities. Tak- 
ing these as evidence, Carranza issued an order 
to have Obregon brought to the capital and 
court-martialed. He was on the point of send- 
ing him to jail when Obregon escaped, 

I believe that in the last days of his rule, Car- 
ranza took special pains to harass Obregon 
for the purpose of precipitating the revolution 
which the latter was preparing. His policy 
was to provoke an abortion. "If they intend 
to rise against me,'' Carranza figured, ''the 
best thing I can do is to drive them to it at once. 
They will be less prepared to fight." 



44 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Bonillas Put in Danger 

During the electoral struggle between Obre- 
gon and Carranza, Senor Bonillas, the innocent 
cause of the political duel, kept in the back- 
ground, limiting himself to obeying the instruc- 
tions of Montes, the President of the Campaign 
Committee, who, in his turn, took orders from 
Don Venustiano. 

The ill-starred candidate ! On many an occa- 
sion I saw him in the hotel at luncheon, sur- 
rounded by crowds of ''enthusiastic admirers" 
who came from the provinces to get their first 
glimpse of him. At other times I found him 
alone with his son, a young student, whom Bo- 
nillas 's wife and daughters had undoubtedly 
ordered to accompany his papa in this adven- 
ture. 

Exhausted by the campaign activities, which 
were a novel experience to him, Bonillas used to 
go out on some afternoons for an automobile 
ride in the vicinity of Mexico City. One day 
at dusk a group of mounted Obregonistas, hard- 
ened old guerrilleros, tried to kidnap him, to 
put him away until after the elections. A bat- 
tle fit for the movies ensued for the moment be- 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOR DE TE 45 

tween the would-be kidnapers and the police 
who were escorting Bonillas in other automo- 
biles. In the melee an Obregonist General was 
captured, an old ranchman who happened to 
find himself '*by accident" on the scene of the 
fight. 

' * You were attempting to kidnap Ambassador 
Bonillas," the Chief of Police told the Obre- 
gonist General. 

''Kidnap that poor devil!" the rural chief 
replied. ''What for? What could I do with 
him? ... If it had been Don Venustiano ! . . . " 

From that day on, I never saw Bonillas again. 
His partisans feared for his life. The hotel 
was not a safe place, and, therefore, his Cam- 
paign Committee, laying hands again on the 
public funds at their disposal, installed him in 
a private house. 

The candidate, showing praiseworthy cool- 
ness in the presence of dangers which his fol- 
lowers probably exaggerated, gave constant 
proof of great loyalty and obedience to Car- 
ranza. 

"Where are you taking me to-day? Where 
does Don Venustiano wish me to go?" he would 
ask. 



46 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Perils of Campaign Tour 

At first he attended several meetings in Mex- 
ico City, packed with well-trained adherents of 
the Government. Later on, he was obliged to 
go to the capitals of several States to counter- 
act with his presence the effects of Obregon's 
campaign. And here was where his real suf- 
ferings and dangers began. 

It seems that the personnel of the railways is 
largely Obregonista. Moreover, Mexicans do 
not need to belong to the Railway Union to leam 
how to cut a railway line. To blow up a train 
with dynamite or to destroy in short order a 
dozen miles or so of railroad track, has come to 
be a national art within the reach of everybody. 
Ten years of revolution have provided ample 
schooling for the purpose. 

The Bonillas train endured the most romantio 
trials and tribulations on its journey over the 
interior States. In one place the locomotive 
would come to a stop barely in time to avoid 
rushing over a section of vanished track ; at an- 
other point, the train would narrowly escape 
plunging into a pit; later still, it would be totally 



THE SAD STORY OF FLOR DE TE 47 

wrecked, with loss of lives among the military 
escort. 

Finally, the Obregon coup surprised Bonillas 
while he was conducting his campaign in the 
State of Jalisco. The enemy cut off the retreat 
of the train by lifting a few rails, and the Car- 
ranza candidate had to return over the rough 
country to the capital in an automobile. 

After this Bonillas disappeared entirely from 
the public eye. He continued to reside in Mex- 
ico City, but who had time to think of him? 

The attention of the entire country was now 
fixed on Carranza and Obregon. War had 
broken out. Montes, the President of the Cam- 
paign Committee, had taken command of a 
body of troops. Candido Aguilar, Bonillas ^s 
war-like orator, had gone to Vera Cruz to re- 
cruit forces for his father-in-law, Carranza, 

And Where Is Bonillas Now? 

Nothing more has been heard about Senor 
Bonillas. As he was in Mexico City, it is cer- 
tain that unless he got out with Carranza he has 
fallen into the hands of his triumphant enemies. 

He lived so happily in Washington before 



48 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Carranza singled him out for the honor of mn- 
ning for President! How he and his family 
must miss those happy days which now seem so 
far off and which, nevertheless, were passing 
only a few months ago ! 

His life is not in danger; he does not run 
the slightest risk. The successful revolution- 
aries, if they have captured him in Mexico City, 
must have thoughts about their prisoner simi- 
lar to those expressed by the rustic General 
arrested by the police at the time of the at- 
tempted kidnaping. ''What can we do with 
this poor devil? ... If we had Don Venu- 
stanio!" 

Moreover, Bonillas and Obregon hail from 
the same State, Sonora, and they have known 
each other since they were boys. I know that 
Obregon likes Bonillas, but I don't think that 
Obregon 's affection can be flattering to the 
vanity of Bonillas. 

''A nice fellow, my friend Bonillas," said 
Obregon to me one day. ''He is reliable, con- 
scientious and hard-working. The world has 
lost a first-class bookkeeper. ... If I ever be- 
come President of the Kepublic I shall make 
him cashier in some bank. ' * 



m. "CITIZEN" OBREGON 

MET Obregon two days before lie fled from 
Mexico City, declaring himself in open re- 
bellion against the authority of President Car- 
ranza. 

At the time of my arrival in Mexico Obre- 
gon was campaigning for his election in distant 
States of the republic. Several friends of mine, 
who are enthusiastic followers of the General, 
were anxious to have me meet and hear their 
idol. *'As soon as Obregon comes back," they 
said, *'we'll arrange a luncheon or dinner so 
that you two men may meet and know each 
other. ' ' 

As a matter of fact, Obregon did not return ; 
he was forcibly brought back to the capital by 
Carranza, who decided to try him for complicity 
with the rebels who had been in arms for some 
time against the Government. This was an 
€:ffective means of putting an end to the cam- 
paign of insults and threats that Obregon had 
been conducting in various States. 

49 



50 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

The forcible return of Obregon to Mexico 
City caused great excitement among the people 
of the capital and stirred their curiosity even 
more. 

''What next?" they asked. ''Will the old 
man have courage enough to send Obregon to 
jail and put him out of the running in that way? 
Will Obregon start a revolution to preserve his 
personal liberty?" 

And when many were asking themselves these 
questions with a certain anxiety, fearing the 
consequences of a final break between the mas- 
ter Carranza and his old pupil Obregon, my 
Obregonista friends came to notify me that they 
had arranged my interview with their hero. 

"The General expects you to take luncheon 
with him to-morrow, ' ' they told me. 

Luncheon with the National Hero 

I had insisted that the luncheon take place in 
a public restaurant, in full view of everybody, 
to avoid the possibility of false interpretations. 
If the luncheon were given in a private house 
to many people it might seem that I had a cer- 
tain predilection for Obregon. There was no 
reason whatever why I should figure as a Car- 



''CITIZEN" OBREGON 51 

ranzista or an Obregonista. My wishes were 
more than amply fulfilled. The luncheon was 
held in the Bac, the most centrally located res- 
taurant in the capital. To make it even less 
secret, it was decided to have it in the main 
dining room, near the orchestra platform, rath- 
er than in a private room. 

Obregon was at that time a personage in dis- 
grace. It was true that he might rise again at 
any moment, but it was equally possible that he 
might be down for the full count. He had en- 
thusiastic friends, but he had also against him 
''old man" Carranza, an enemy of tenacious 
hatreds and indomitable energy. The mysteri- 
ous hour when public opinion shakes off its in- 
ertia and swings unexpectedly to one side or 
the other had not yet struck. The timid were 
still holding aloof ; the crafty were making their 
calculations, but had not yet succeeded in dis- 
pelling their own doubts. 

Obregon was still an unknown quantity. If 
you sided with him you might climb to a posi- 
tion in the Cabinet, but you also might walk to 
a place in front of the firing squad. The shrewd 
ones were waiting for the atmosphere to clear 
a little, and Obregon could count only on his 



52 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

personal following, the friends who had been 
faithful to him through thick and thin. The 
men who watch the trend of events from a point 
of vantage and eagerly await the psychological 
moment to rush to the succor of the sure winner 
had not yet heard the call. 

The Disconcerting Obregan 

When I entered the restaurant I saw Obre- 
gon sitting at a table with a friend to whom he 
was explaining the fine points of a cocktail 
which the General himself had invented. The 
reader must not jump at conclusions and infer 
that Obregon is a drunkard because I found 
him so engaged. I believe he drinks very little. 
During the luncheon he took beer in preference 
to wine, and on several occasions he called for 
water. But as a warrior who has lived in the 
open air, suffering the rigor of inclement 
weather and spending whole nights without 
sleep, he likes to take a casual drink from time 
to time to tune up his nervous system. 

It would be equally erroneous to imagine him 
as a Mexican chieftain of the type which we 
so frequently see in the movies and vaudevilles 
— a copper-colored personage with slanting 



''CITIZEN" OBREGON 53 

eyes and thick, stiff hair, sharp as an awl; in 
short, an Indian dressed up like a comic-opera 
General. Obregon is nothing of the sort; he is 
white, so positively white that it is difficult to 
conceive his having a single drop of Indian 
blood in his veins. He is so distinctively Span- 
ish that he could walk in the streets of Madrid 
without any one guessing that he hailed from 
the American hemisphere. 

''My grandparents came from Spain," he 
told me. ''I don't know from which province. 
Other people bother their heads a great deal 
about their ancestors. They imagine they come 
from noble stock and claim descent from Span- 
ish Dukes and Marquises. I know only that 
my people came from Spain. They must have 
been poor folk driven to emigrate by sheer hun- 



ger." 



The personage began to reveal himself. Ob- 
regon is a man who is always trying to amaze 
his hearer, now with explosions of pride, now 
with strokes of unexpected humility. The im- 
portant thing for him is to be disconcerting, to 
say something that his listeners are not expect- 
ing to hear. 



54 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Close-Up of tiie Idol 

He is still young — not quite 40. He has a 
strong and exuberant constitution. You can 
see at once that the man is brimming over with 
vitality. A slight vaiicosis has colored his 
cheeks with a number of slender, red veins, 
which give a reddish tint to his complexion. 
His enemy Don Venustiano suffers also from 
varicosis of the face, but his nose is the only 
feature that shows it prominently. It is fur- 
rowed by a series of red, blue and green veins 
that remind you of the wavy lines on a hydro- 
graphic map. All aggressive men have a more 
or less close resemblance to birds and animals 
of prey. Some are thin and sharp beaked, like 
hawks. Others have the mane and the arro- 
gance of the lion. A few are lithe and myste- 
rious, like the tiger. Obregon, with his short, 
thick neck, broad shoulders and small, sharp 
eyes, which on occasion emit fierce glints, re- 
minds you of a wild boar. 

Obregon is single and lives the life of a sol- 
dier, attended by one aid, an ex-ranchman who 
is even rougher than he. As Obregon has only 
one arm, and, consequently, cannot devote more 



"CITIZEN" OBREGON 55 

than one hand to the care of his person, the 
'*hero of Celaya'^ — as he is frequently called — 
is rather slovenly in appearance. In his mili- 
tary uniform he may look better. The man I 
met wore a dirty and much-worn Panama hat, 
haggy trousers and a shabby coat, one of whose 
sleeves hung empty, showing that the arm had 
been amputated near the shoulder. 

Obregon's apparent contempt for all person- 
al adornment is characteristic of the man. An- 
other reason for his carelessness in matters of 
dress is his desire to flatter the Mexican popu- 
lace, who consider that his slovenly garb brings 
him closer to them. 

The missing arm enables the people to recog- 
nize Obregon at a distance. They greet him 
enthusiastically whenever they see him. Obre- 
gon is the conqueror of Pancho Villa; he is 
the man who broke up the military power that 
came near placing that old cattle rustler in 
the Presidential chair of the republic. 

Villa, Defeated, Almost Forgotten 

Villa is almost forgotten in Mexico. He is 
talked about more in the United States than 
in his own country. A few years ago he was 



56 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

"The General" among all Generals, and many 
even spoke enthusiastically of his military tal- 
ent, seeing in him the man who would take it 
upon himself to exterminate any foreigner dar- 
ing to invade the soil of the nation. Now he 
is nothing but a bandit and people avoid all 
reference to him. He will continue to make 
trouble, but his star has surely set. Obregon 
defeated him in ten bloody skirmishes, mis- 
named battles, and this was sufficient to make 
Obregon the hero of the hour. Moreover, Pan- 
cho Villa has escaped bodily injury; he has 
all his limbs. With insolent good luck he has 
kept out of the way of bullets. Obregon, on 
the contrary, has only one arm, thus adding 
to his heroic record the sympathy that the 
martyr arouses. 

I sat down and the luncheon began, a lunch- 
eon that started at noon and lasted until 4. 

Don Venustiano, always suspicious, as is nat- 
ural in the head of a nation where every one 
is likely to darse la vuelta — to betray — and 
no one knows with certainty who is his friend 
and who is his enemy, spoke to me a few days 
later about this luncheon. I was the one to 



"CITIZEN" OBREGON 57 

broach the subject. I told him frauMy that I 
had lunched with one of his enemies. 

''I know," he replied. ''But what the devil 
did you have to talk about that it took you four 
whole hours?" 

And he scrutinized my eyes as though he 
were trying to read my thoughts. 

Obregon's Debut in Chick-peas 

In reality Obregon had nothing interesting 
to tell me. But he is such a character! It is 
so agreeable to sit and listen hours and hours 
to his animated, lively and picturesque con- 
versation, which is more Spanish than Mexican. 

He had selected the table near the orchestra 
so that he could give orders to the musicians. 
He was anxious to show me that he was not 
an ignorant soldier and that he loved music — 
Mexican music, of course, for other kinds of 
music mean little to him. And while the or- 
chestra played the "Jarabe," the "Cielito" 
and the **Mananitas" — Mexican national airs 
— Obregon talked and talked, swallowing mean- 
while pieces of food that he had an attend- 
ant cut for him, as he can use only one hand. 



§8 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

The General is invincible in conversation. I 
can talk a great deal myself, but I was forced 
to withdraw before his onslaught, as thor- 
oughly defeated as Pancho Villa himself. I 
listened. 

He told me the story of his youth. He is 
sure that he was bom to be the first every- 
where. He does not say so himself, but he 
helps you to suspect it with modest insinua- 
tions. In Sonora he was a trader in garhansos 
— chick-peas — and although he made rather 
small profits, he is sure that he would have 
become eventually the first merchant in Mexico 
— a great millionaire. 

*'You see, the revolution spoiled all that for 
me. I then became a soldier and I rose to be a 
General. ' ' 

What he neglected to add was that, in spite 
of his General's commission, he remained in 
business just the same, and his enemies affirm 
that he has realized his ambition to become a 
millionaire. He has a monopoly at present of 
all the chick-pea trade in Mexico. The peas 
are exported to Spain, where garhanzos, as 
they are called, are an article of common con- 
sumption. The same enemies assert that all 



"CITIZEN" OBEEGON 59 

the farmers in Mexico are obliged to sell their 
garbanzos to Obregon, at a price which he 
himself fixes. That is the advantage of being 
a hero and of losing an arm in defense of the 
Constitution. 

"All of Us Thieves, More or Less" 

However, I shall n5t dwell on what Obregon 's 
enemies say about him. The General went on 
talking about himself. He has a line of risquS 
stories which he tells with a brutal frankness 
smacking of the camp and the bivouac. They 
helped me to understand the popularity of the 
man. He talks that way with everybody, with 
the women of the street, with the workingmen 
he meets, with the peasants in the country, and 
those simple people swell with pride at being 
treated with such familiarity and at hearing 
such amusing stories from a national hero, the 
conqueror of Celaya, a former Minister of War, 
and a man who has only one arm ! 

''They have probably told you that I am a 
bit of a thief." 

Taken somewhat aback, I looked around in 
surprise to make sure it was really Obregon 
who had said that, and that he had said it to 



60 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

me. I hesitated, not knowing really what 
answer to make. 

"Yes,'* he insisted. **You have heard that 
story without a doubt. All of us are thieves, 
more or less, down here." 

"Why, General," I said, with a gesture of 
protest, "I never pay any attention to gossip! 
All lies, I am sure." 

But Obregon ignored what I was saying, and 
continued : 

"The point is, however, I have only one, 
hand, while the others have two. That's why 
people prefer me. I can't steal so much or so 
fast." 

A hurst of laughter! Obregon saluted his 
own witticism with the reserved hilarity of a 
cynical boy, while his two friends who were 
with us paid tribute to the hero's jest with 
endless boisterousness. 

Joke of the Itching Palm 

This oratorical success made the General still 
more talkative. He insisted on treating me to 
more stories, perhaps to show me that he held 
the gossip about him in contempt, perhaps to 
enjoy the pleasure of surprising and embar- 



"CITIZEN" OBEEGON 61 

rassing me by the spectacle of a man depreciat- 
ing himself. 

''You probably don't know how they found 
the hand I lost!" 

In reality, I did know, just as, for that mat- 
ter, I had already heard the joke about his 
being more honest than the others because he 
had only one hand. But in order not to spoil 
the General's delight in his own brilliancy I 
assured him I did not know the story. 

''You know I lost my arm in battle. It was 
carried off by a shell which exploded near me 
while I was talking with my staff. After giving 
me the first treatments, my men set out to find 
my arm on the ground. They looked about in 
all directions, but couldn't find it anywhere. 
"Where could the hand and its fragment of arm 
have gone to ? 

" 'I'll find it for you,' said one of my aids, 
an old friend of mine. 'It will come back by 
itself. Watch me!' 

"He took out of his purse a ten-dollar gold 
piece, an aztec, as we call it, and raised it above 
his head. At once a sort of bird, with five 
wings, rose from the ground. It was my miss- 
ing hand, which had not been able to resist the 



62 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

temptation to fly from its hiding place and seize 
a gold coin. ' ' 

A second ovation from the guests ! And the 
man with the one arm exploded with laughter 
at the naughty prank of his missing hand, and, 
not to be discourteous to its former owner, I 
laughed as well. 

The Ambassador's Missing Watch 

"And you never heard how the Spanish Am- 
bassador lost his watch?" 

I could see what Obregon was driving at. 
This story was to be not at his own expense, 
but against * ' that other fellow, ' ' his enemy and 
persecutor. However, I pretended to be quite 
innocent, so that the General could have the 
pleasure of telling the story. 

''A new Minister from Spain had just pre- 
sented his credentials, and President Carranza 
was anxious to welcome him with a great offi- 
cial banquet. The thing had to be done well. 
Spain had been the first European nation to 
recognize Don Venustiano's Government after 
the revolution." 

As I listened to the hero I thought of the 
grand dining hall of the palace at Chapultepec, 



"CITIZEN" OBREGON 63 

which recalls the tragic days of Maximilian, 
the Austrian Emperor of Mexico. I could see 
Don Venustiano in evening dress, with his 
white beard and red-white-and-green nose, 
seated opposite the Spanish Ambassador, and 
beside the latter, Obregon, Minister of War; 
Candido Aguilar, Minister of Foreign Rela- 
tions ; the elegant Barragan, in a new uniform 
bought for the occasion, and all the other digni- 
taries created by the First Chief. 

''Suddenly," continued Obregon, ''the Span- 
ish diplomat raised his hand to his vest, and 
grew pale. 'Caramba!' he exclaimed. 'My 
watch is gone!' It was an antique timepiece, 
gold and inset with diamonds, an heirloom in 
the Ambassador's family. 

"Complete silence! First he looks at me, 
for I am sitting next to him. But I have an 
arm missing, and, as it happens, on the side 
nearest the Ambassador. I cannot have taken 
his watch ! Then he looks at Candido Aguilar, 
Don Venustiano 's son-in-law, who is sitting on 
the other side. Aguilar still has both his arms, 
but one of his hands, and by chance the one 
next to the Ambassador, is almost paralyzed. 
Neither can he be the pick-pocket! Convinced 



64 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

that he must say good-by forever to his lost 
jewelry, the Spanish Minister sat out the rest 
of the meal cursing desperately under his 
breath. 

" 'They have stolen my watch. This is not 
a Government. This is a den of thieves!' 

''When they got up from the table Don Venu- 
stiano, with his usual dignified and venerable 
bearing, stepped up to the Ambassador and 
whispered, 'Here you are, but say nothing more 
about it. ' 

"The diplomat could not contain his aston- 
ishment and admiration! 'It was not the man 
on my right ! It was not the man on my left ! 
It was the man across the table in front of me ! 
Oh, my dear Mr. President, quite rightly do 
they call you the First Chief.' " 

If the laughter at a joke on Obregon had been 
noisy, that for a joke on Carranza resembled 
a cannonade. 

There is no doubt about it. Obregon is an 
excellent table companion. His amusing chat- 
ter is inexhaustible. 

Leaving his stories, he went on to the sub- 
ject of his election campaign. He is as proud 



"CITIZEN" OBREGON 65 

of his speeches as he is of his triumphant bat- 
tles. The General is a born orator, and like all 
self-educated men who take up reading late in 
life, he noticeably prefers the sonorous, theatri- 
cal sentence which never says anything. 

He invited me to attend one of his election 
meetings to hear him speak to a crowd. At the 
moment he had on his mind a great parade 
which the laborers of the capital were prepar- 
ing in his honor. It was to be headed by 1,500 
Mexican women — all the dressmakers in the 
city. The women of Mexico feel a purely spirit- 
ual inclination toward this plain-speaking 
soldier, who treats every one as his equal. 

He expounded his platform to me volubly: 
democracy — enforcement of the law — realiza- 
tion of the promises made by the revolution, 
and which the '*old chief" had forgotten — dis- 
tribution of lands to the poor. The real reason 
for his candidacy, the argument that has great- 
est weight with him, he never mentioned, but I 
could read it in his eyes. 

*' Besides," Obregon undoubtedly says to 
himself, ''besides, I made Don Venustiano 
President. I took him in triumph from Vera 



66 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Cruz to the Presidential chair in Mexico City. 
He became President through my efforts. Now 
it is my turn. Isn't that fair?" 

He Is an Author, Too 

Since the General had already forgotten his 
jokes and stories and had now to speak with 
the seriousness befitting a Chief Executive, he 
gradually and imperceptibly passed from ora- 
tory to literature. The General became a ** col- 
league" of mine, a man of letters. He has writ- 
ten a book telling the story of his campaigns. 
That has been the custom of all victorious war- 
riors since the time of Julius Caesar. Why 
should he not also indulge in a set of ** Com- 
mentaries"? 

He promised to send me a copy of his book. 
But to forestall the chance that his difficulties 
with Carranza might prevent him from keeping 
the promise, he went on to give me an idea of 
the book in advance. 

He said that he expressed himself simply 
and with modesty. Of course his battles could 
not be compared with those of the European 
war. . . . **I also realize that I am only an 
amateur in the military business, a civilian, 



"CITIZEN" OBREGON 67 

forced to take up arms — ^Citizen Obregon pro- 
moted to be a General: and doubtless I had 
strokes of sheer luck ! " 

I was listening to Obregon with real 
affection. I was regarding him as the most 
attractive and most able man among all the 
Mexican Generals made by the national up- 
heaval. But suddenly the wind changed. Men 
never get really to know each other. Obregon 
began to twirl his sharp-pointed, upturning 
mustache, and smiling in pride at his own 
modesty, he lay back on his divan. 

"When I was Minister of War, at a banquet 
at the President's house one day, the Dutch 
representative, who v/as a military man, came 
up to me and said, ' General, from what branch 
of the service did you come — artillery, cav- 
alry?^ In view of my victories he thought I 
must be a professional soldier. Imagine his 
astonishment when I told him I had been a 
ohick-pea dealer in Sonora! He refused to be- 
lieve it." 

More About His Great Book 

The General stopped a moment to enjoy the 
impression his words were making on us. 



68 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

'* Another time the German Minister came 
to see me. You doubtless know him by repu- 
tation, Mr. Ibaiiez." 

"Very well indeed," I replied. "He was the 
fellow who during the late war suggested to 
the Mexican Government the possibility of re- 
covering California and Arizona. He used to 
appear at public ceremonies in a great Prus- 
sian uniform with decorations, to receive the 
applause of a paid claque or an ignorant crowd 
which was always hissing the plain black eve- 
ning dress of the diplomatic representative of 
the United States." 

"Well," said Obregon, "the German came 
to see me, and in his short abrupt accent said 
to me: 'General, I have read your book, and 
I need two copies of it, one for my Emperor 
and the other for the archives of the German 
General Staif. The people back in Berlin are 
much interested in you. They are astounded 
that a plain civilian, without military training, 
has been able to conduct such noteworthy and 
original campaigns.' " 

"I suppose you gave him the books?" 

"No, I don't care for honors like that. I 
told him he could find them in the bookstores 



'•CITIZEN" OBREGON 69 

if he wanted them. And I suppose he bought 
them and sent them on home." 

What a farceur that shrewd German was ! 

The hero doubtless remembered my hatred 
of German militarism, so to emphasize his im- 
partiality he jumped to the Far East. 

*'The Japanese Minister also asked my per- 
mission to translate the book into Japanese. 
My campaigns seem to have aroused a good 
deal of interest over there." 

"Has the translation appeared yet?" I in- 
quired. 

"I don't know. I don't bother about such 
matters." 

Popular Appeal of a "Bad Man" 

A long silence. I sat looking somewhat dis- 
concertedly at this man, so complex for all of his 
primitive simplicity, who alarms you at one 
moment by his craftiness and at the next aston- 
ishes you by his complete ingenuousness. 

Nevertheless, he is the most popular and the 
most feared man in Mexico, the man every- 
where most talked about. Some people love 
him to the extent that they would die for him. 
Others hate him and would like to kill him, 



70 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

as they remember the barbarous outrages he 
ordered in the early days of the triumphant 
revolution, actuated by some perverse whim of 
his very original character. 

He appeals to the multitude for his some- 
what rustic frankness, his good-natured wick- 
edness and his rather brutal gayety. He has, 
besides, the prestige of a courage which no one 
questions, and of an aggressiveness, in a pinch, 
like that of a wild boar at bay. To cap the 
climax, he has lost an arm. 

My readers must pardon me for emphasizing 
this latter point. In Mexico such things are 
more important than elsewhere. The people in 
Mexico, who are ready to take up guns and kill 
each other at a moment's notice and most of 
the time without knowing why, are very senti- 
mental and easily moved to tears. Mexicans 
give up their lives with the greatest indiffer- 
ence and for anybody at all. At the same time 
they will weep at the slightest annoyance oc- 
casioned to one of their loved heroes. The 
Mexican populace descends from the Aztecs, 
those magnificent gardeners who lovingly culti- 
vated flowers and, at the same time, tore the 
hearts out of a thousand living prisoners at 



"CITIZEN" OBREGON 71 

each of their religious festivals. Poetry and 
blood, sentimentality and death! It is a pity 
that Obregon's lost arm did not actually leave 
its hiding place to seize the gold **azteo" which 
the General's aid held out to it, in the story! 
It would have been worshiped by the people 
with national honors. 

Value of an Amputated Leg 

There are precedents for this. General 
Santa Ana was an Obregon in his day. Though 
the latter has never been President yet, the 
former reached the Presidency several times 
through uprisings or manipulated elections. 
The Mexican people hated Santa Ana after his 
unsuccessful campaign against the secession- 
ists, who had established a republic in Texas. 
The Texans defeated his army and made him 
prisoner. However, at that moment, it oc- 
curred to the French Government of Louis 
Philippe to send a military expedition into 
Mexico to enforce some diplomatic demands, 
and French soldiers disembarked in Vera Cruz. 
Santa Ana rushed to oppose them, and the last 
shot the invaders fired hit him in the leg, and 
the surgeons had to amputate it. 



72 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Never did a popularity rise to such pure and 
exalted heights. Santa Ana's leg, properly 
pickled, was taken from Vera Cruz to Mexico 
City with a great guard of honor. The Gov- 
ernment bestowed on the amputated limb the 
honors of a Captain General killed in battle, 
and in the midst of triumphal pageantry, the 
booming of cannon and the music of bands, it 
was buried in the center of the city under a 
great monument. 

However, reversals of opinion and sudden 
waves of anger must be looked for in senti- 
mental peoples. Years later Santa Ana went 
to war with the United States over the Texas 
affair. The campaign went against him and 
the Americans took Mexico City. The people 
needed to vent its wrath on somebody, and 
since it could not get its hands on Santa Ana, 
it tore down the monument to his heroic leg, 
paraded the unfortunate bone through the 
streets of the city and finally threw it into a 
dung heap. 

His Threats Not "Celestial Music" 

Obregon spoke to me about a friend of his, 
a newspaper man, some of whose articles were 



"CITIZEN" OBREGON 73 

worthy of admiration. "He is ill," said the 
General, ''and practically dying. He has been 
in bed for several months. He wonld be de- 
lighted if you wonld pay him a visit." 

The General and I agreed to go together. 
**I am going to see the silver mines at Pachuca 
to-morrow," I said. ''I shall be away two 
days." 

"When you come back I shall still be here," 
said the General. ' ' All that talk about the old 
man's prosecuting me and putting me in jail 
is just celestial music (Mexican for 'hot air'). 
We shall see each other. I'll give you my book 
and we'll go and see my friend." 

When I got back the General had disap- 
peared. He had fled from the city not to re- 
turn till just now, when he comes back as a 
conqueror. 

Obregon did well to get away when he did. 
The threats of "the old man" were not music. 
A few hours later Carranza would have had 
him locked up. 

Carranza told me so himself the last time I 
saw him. 



IV. THE REAL AUTHOR OF CARRANZA'S 
DOWNFALL 

THE third candidate for the Presidency of 
the republic, Don Pablo Gonzalez, is a per- 
sonage who has been thrown into the back- 
ground, apparently, by the kaleidoscopic per- 
sonality and overwhelming popularity of 
Obregon. 

I did not meet General Gonzalez. He is not 
the type of man that inspires you with an irre- 
pressible desire to know him, as is the case with 
his rival Obregon and other characters of the 
Mexican revolution. The personality of Don 
Pablo is elusive; it escapes the pursuit of the 
observer however much the latter may concen- 
trate his attention on seizing it. His pictures 
exhibit him as a man of dark complexion, with 
very black and bushy brows and mustache, 
and wearing dark-colored glasses that hide his 
eyes. This last detail must have given many 

74 



AUTHOE OF CARRANZA'S DOWNFALL 75 

an anxious moment to Pancho Villa, who was so 
worried by the blue spectacles of Don Venu- 
stiano. 

Not a few people in Mexico consider Don 
Pablo an expert in the great art of dissimula- 
tion, and they aver that General Gonzalez wears 
dark glasses to prevent the indiscreet from 
reading his thoughts in his eyes. I know some 
friends of Don Pablo who swear that he is an 
honest man. I know likewise a great many 
enemies of his who picture him as a fraud, a 
hypocrite and a crook, adding that his supposed 
kindness is mere sham and that he has behind 
him a personal record full of deeds that cannot 
bear close scrutiny. 

The military history of this man is amazing. 

"General Gonzalez commanded the largest 
forces in the revolution and he came out of it 
with the unique honor of having lost every bat- 
tle in which he was engaged." Thus was Gon- 
zalez described to me by President Carranza 
and his most intimate friends on one occasion 
when I was questioning them about the per- 
sonality of this chief. 

And Don Venustiano added with what 
seemed to me mock seriousness: ''But Don 



76 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Pablo inspires so much confidence; he is so 
respectable ..." 

I came to the conclusion that the most con- 
spicuous role played by General Gonzalez in 
Mexican life has been that of a kindly man who 
inspires confidence, although his enemies pro- 
test that he has never been either kind or trust- 
worthy. 

One of the Few Dons Left 

The people who speak of Obregon familiarly 
and call nearly all the revolutionary personages 
by their last names, can never mention General 
Gonzalez without prefixing to his name the title 
of Don. Gonzalez is always Don Pablo, just 
as Carranza is Don Venustiano and Diaz was 
Don Porfirio. Aside from these three, there 
are no more Dons in Mexico. No one would 
think of calling General Obregon Don Alvaro; 
he is too democratic. 

"When Obregon and Don Pablo were cam- 
paigning independently under the government 
of Carranza to win the elections for the Presi- 
dency, public opinion swung around in a rather 
unexpected manner. The conservative ele- 
ments, the law-abiding citizens, and the re- 



AUTHOR OF CARRANZA'S DOWNFALL 77 

ligious classes had to choose a candidate and 
they all instinctively turned to Don Pablo. 

This same Don Pablo had shown little re- 
spect for the rights of property when he was in 
command of troops. He had executed many 
people openly, and his enemies accused him of 
having indirectly caused the death of others. 
Moreover, in religious matters he had never 
given proof of definite and positive faith. But 
all the cautious citizens who were alarmed by 
the exuberant aggressiveness of Obregon took 
pains to forget the dubious history of Don 
Pablo, and they rallied around him, repeating 
always the same slogan: ^'Vote for Don Pablo; 
he is safe and sane! Vote for the man who 
thinks twice before he speaks ! ' ' 

There are people who instinctively follow 
the man who does not talk, in the belief that 
silence is the sign of all wisdom ; just as there 
are others who are captivated only by those 
who talk a great deal and loudly. 

Why Don Pablo Is Rich 

According to his enemies, in his youth Don 
Pablo Gonzalez was a peon in a factory at $20 
a month. To-day he is considered one of the 



78 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

richest men in Mexico, both in real estate and 
personal property. How did he work the 
miracle ? 

By becoming a General. The reader must 
neither laugh nor give this statement a false 
interpretation. To be a General in Mexico 
means a great deal more, from a pecuniary 
standpoint, than it does in any other country 
on earth, however rich the country may be. It 
must be understood, of course, that by General 
I mean one in command of troops ; because the 
General not in command of troops in Mexico 
is a poor devil who draws a miserable salary 
(when it is not withheld under accusation of 
disloyalty to the Government) and whose only 
hope of advancement lies in a new revolution 
that may give him command of a few regiments. 

Military administration, as it is organized 
in all modern countries, does not exist in 
Mexico. The chief in command of troops re- 
ceives directly from the Government the money 
needed for their maintenance, and he distrib- 
utes it as he pleases. The President of the 
Kepublic takes good care not to ask him for 
explanations, nor is an accounting ever de- 
manded. Such an offensive curiosity on the 



AUTHOR OF OAERANZA'S DOWNFALL 79 

part of the President would be deemed intoler- 
able by the gentleman in command of the 
troops, and he would protest against it by ris- 
ing in arms against the constituted authority. 

This is the reason why a Greneral in active 
service does not need to violate the rights of 
private property to increase his income. All 
he has to do is to keep a portion of the money 
sent him by the Government. The worst of it 
is that the majority of the Mexican Generals 
are two-handed, as Obregon put it, and while 
they loot the public treasury with one hand, 
to keep the other busy they pick the pockets of 
private individuals. 

Every corps commander receives at the end 
of each month a large sum. of money, thou- 
sands of dollars, to pay for his cavalry fodder. 
The commander pockets the money and imme- 
diately issues an order to have the horses put 
to graze in private meadows. This business of 
paying for fodder may be the proper thing in 
Europe where army horses cannot be sent to 
graze in private fields without loud protest. 

Then there are the men. The Mexican armies 
treble and quadruple when they figure on paper 
in the Treasury of the Ministry of War; and 



80 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

they dwindle astonishingly when the pay is 
actually handed out. The General who certifies 
that he has ten battalions under his orders does 
not have in reality more than ten skeletons of 
battalions. Colonels and Captains, in their 
turn, do the same when they report about their 
units. All of them eat rations and receive 
pay for soldiers who do not exist. 

This is by no means an innovation, and can- 
not be charged to the Government created by 
the revolution. Such practice has been the 
rule in Mexico from the earliest days of the 
republic and it constitutes a national evil that 
no one has dared to extirpate. Don Porfirio 
himself, despite his autocratic character and his 
thirty years of domination, during which there 
seemed to be no other will in the country than 
his own, was forced, nevertheless, to tolerate 
this abuse, and never dared to stop it, although 
he must undoubtedly have known that it 
existed. 

Until I visited Mexico I could not account for 
the amazing rapidity with which President Diaz 
was defeated and driven from power. He had 
an army, a real, modern army, similar to that 
of any powerful nation. His regiments were 



AUTHOR OF OAREANZA'S DOWNFALL 81 

well dressed, well equipped and well organized. 
His officers used to go for practical training 
to the best military schools of the Old World. 
In fact, the regimental bands of some of his 
crack corps would occasionally go to Europe 
and participate with distinction in international 
band tournaments. 

His Generals were professional men who had 
entered the army to make it their life work. 
They were men specially trained in the science 
and art of war, and they knew a great deal 
more about military matters than all the im- 
provised guerrilleros whom the revolution later 
honored with the title of General put together. 

And yet, as soon as the visionary Madero' 
changed from preaching to action, and took the 
field with his undisciplined hordes who knew as 
much about war as he did — and he knew noth- 
ing — the entire Federal Army collapsed in 
short order. The country had believed in good 
faith that the Mexican Army consisted of a 
hundred thousand men. The people of Mexico 
City saw that the garrison was not very nu- 
merous, but they said: ''The main body is in 
Guadalajara." The people in Guadalajara 
were sure the bulk of the army was in Puebla, 



82 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

and the people in Puebla placed it in Vera 
Cruz. Thus one great nucleus after another 
was ''organized," and everybody was sure a 
gigantic army was on hand, though it existed 
really only in the purses of the Generals com- 
missioned to manage the phantom. 

The only person probably who had precise 
knowledge of the truth was old Diaz ; but he did 
not consider a popular uprising as within the 
range of possibility. He never dreamed that 
Madero, whom he took for a crazy young chap, 
could ever put a revolution through. The only 
danger that occurred to him was an attempt 
of the Generals to revolt, the way he himself 
had risen against the President of his time. It 
was in view of such a contingency that he was 
willing to wink at everything, letting his Gen- 
erals steal to their hearts ' content. 

Of the 100,000 men for years and years pro- 
vided for in the Mexican war budget Diaz's 
Generals, recognized experts in strategy, could 
put in the field only 14,000, in addition to the 
detached corps kept as garrisons in the big 
towns. That is the sole explanation of the 
rapidity with which Diaz was overthrown and 
of the sad role played by an army which he 



AUTHOR OF OARRANZA'S DOWNFALL 83 

had showered with attentions, favors and good 
pay for thirty years, the moment it came in 
contact with the disorganized mobs of the 
revolution. 

The Verb "to Carranza" 

As I remarked, Don Pablo Gonzalez has been 
in command of larger conting^ents of men, in 
times of peace as well as in times of war, than 
any other General of the revolution. His ene- 
mies keep busy, therefore, computing the 
height of the mountains of forage he has con- 
sumed and the number of thousands of soldiers 
the General has recruited in his own imagi- 
nation. 

Such malicious speculations, which may be 
quite erroneous, though they appear in part 
justified by the unexplainable fortune of Don 
Pablo, are not surprising. What man of promi- 
nence in Mexico has not been accused of graft? 
The Mexican people is fond of broad generali- 
zations. To save itself the annoyance of mak- 
ing nice distinctions it includes everybody in 
one sweeping judgment and calls ''thief" after 
all the people ever connected with the Govern- 
ment. 



84 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

The venerable Carranza has not escaped such 
charges by any means. They call him the 
** First Chief ... of those who come in the 
night." Long ago the wags of the capital be- 
gan to use a new verb, "to carranza," the 
exact humor of which may not appear in Eng- 
lish. ''To carranza," in the cafes and vaude- 
ville theaters of Mexico City, means "to steal," 
and you can hear people conjugating it on every 
hand: "I carranza, thou carranzest, he car- 
ranzas — they all carranza." 

For my own part, I believe that such charges 
are unfounded. They spring from the intense 
passions of politics. Of all the men around 
him, Don Venustiano is the one who comes 
from a comfortable social station. Not enor- 
mously rich, to be sure, he has never known 
what poverty is. Before he threw himself into 
the revolution he was a country land owner, 
a rancher, with a fine piece of property and 
splendid herds. Carranza has defects, but 
among them I should not be inclined to place 
an exaggerated appetite for money. What he 
wants is power, control over men, the privi- 
lege of being first wherever he is. And when 



AUTHOR OF CARRANZA'S DOWNFALL 85 

sucli an ambition is dominant in people it does 
not leave them time for making money; but it 
often induces an otherwise honest man to toler- 
ate, and even to protect, the thieving of 
others. 

Don Venustiano had to keep the people about 
him satisfied. He was anxious to gather round 
him all those who might eventually be of use 
to him as men of combat. Himself a man of 
unbending pride, he had to swallow the inso- 
lence and foster the vices of his retainers. Un- 
der his protecting wing a great deal of stealing 
went on. There is no question about that. At 
times the old rancher, remembering how angry 
he used to get when somebody stole one of his 
cows, would rise in his wrath, and talk of hav- 
ing the whole crowd of grafters shot. A mo- 
ment's thought, however, was enough to remind 
him that in that case he might be left all alone. 
He would end by coming to an understanding 
with the culprit he had caught. If Carranza 
had insisted on the strict enforcement of the 
moral code he would have fallen long before 
he did. More probably, he would never have 
become President at all. 



86 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Story of the Diplomat's New Auto 

People in Mexico City told me a story of his 
first days in office when he had just entered 
the capital as conqueror. A diplomatic rep- 
resentative had come to pay his respects to the 
President, and left a splendid automobile which 
he had just bought, in the court yard of the 
Executive Mansion. On going out after the 
interview the diplomat looked for his beauti- 
fully painted car in vain. The soldiers of the 
Presidential Guard relieved his anxiety. One 
of the most loyal — and most feared — Generals 
of the President had got into the car and or- 
dered the chauffeur to drive off. 

The diplomat thought some mistake had been 
made and reported the matter to Don Venu- 
stiano. The President immediately sent an Ad- 
jutant to the barracks, where the General, to 
keep in closer contact with a regiment of 
soldiers from the provinces who followed him 
blindly everywhere, was living. The Presiden- 
tial emissary could not have been welcomed 
more warmly. 

''Say, go back and tell the old man," thun- 



AUTHOR OF OAERANZA'S DOWNFALL 87 

dered the rustic Mars, '^'that I have been look- 
ing for an automobile like that for a long time, 
and I am going to keep it. What does he think 
we made the revolution for? What does he 
think we made him President for? And if he 
doesn't like that, tell him to come and get this 
flivver himself . . . and I will lick the stuffing 
out of him." 

Don Venustiano is a man of some *'pep" 
himself. When he got that message he flew into 
a rage and started toward the door as though 
he really meant to go and get the automobile 
in person. But then he stopped and began to 
stroke his white flowing beard. ''After all, I 
am President of the republic ..." So he or- 
dered another automobile, exactly like the one 
the diplomat had lost, and had it sent to the 
legation. 

Don Pablo Gonzalez was the man really re- 
sponsible for President Carranza's fall. The 
''old man" always had the highest esteem for 
the General and gave him the best commands 
in the army. But the perpetual "General in 
Active Service" wanted to become President; 
and since Carranza, with his characteristic 



88 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

stubbornness, insisted on pushing the can- 
didacy of Bonillas, Don Pablo finished by be- 
coming the President's enemy. 

While r was still in Mexico, and a long time 
after Obregon placed himself in open revolt, 
the General was maintaining a doubtful atti- 
tude toward what was going on. No one 
thought it possible that Don Pablo would ever 
start an uprising himself. But it was just as 
far from everybody's thought that he would 
ever favor a rebellion started by some one else. 

Don Pablo is not the kind of man to strike 
the first blow. Respectable, prudent people 
never do such things. They leave it to the 
Obregons. But the General is the sort of per- 
son quite willing to strike the second blow, 
when his enemy, thrown off his balance, is 
least expecting attack from a new direction. 
Gonzalez is a man who looks before he leaps 
— ^but he leaps at the right moment. 

Had it not been for the intervention of this 
respectable and prudent chieftain on the side 
of the rebellion Carranza would be still, at the 
present moment, in his mansion in Mexico City, 
giving orders to faithful Generals to combat 
Obregon and Obregon 's partisans. 



AUTHOR OF CARRANZA'S DOWNFALL 89 

How Carranza's Plans Went Awry 

The Mstory of the recent overturn, which has 
not yet come to a close, may be summarized 
briefly as follows: Carranza tried to impose 
his candidate Bonillas on Mexico as a whole, 
planning then to overwhelm Sonora, where the 
center of the Obregonist movement was located. 
In Sonora an active campaign against the 
President was on foot, but before all the prepa- 
rations were complete Carranza started to nag 
the rebellious State and trample on its au- 
tonomous rights. His purpose was to provoke 
a premature explosion of the revolutionary 
magazine. 

Sonora finally rose in revolt, and Carranza 
in his turn caught Obregon off guard, and was 
thinking of putting the General in a safe place, 
at a time when, as he thought, the Presidential 
orders would still be respected. However, 
Obregon got away, and his partisans in the 
army began to mutiny, but obviously without 
collusion with one another and with an indis- 
putable lack of unity. It was a spontaneous 
uprising, every one acting on his own initiative, 
as happens in a powerful party, which, at a 



90 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

surprise attack from tlie enemy, feels itself sud- 
denly in danger of checkmate and has to move 
before its plans are all laid. 

Meanwhile, Carranza was getting a large 
body of troops together in the neighborhood of 
the capital. He sent his son-in-law, Candido 
Aguilar, to raise additional contingents in Vera 
Cruz and create a place of refuge for himself, 
in case of need, in that stronghold. Carranza 
did the same thing some years ago, when he 
was expelled from Mexico City by Villa and 
Zapata. 

I cannot affirm that Carranza would have 
been triumphant in the end. It is almost cer- 
tain that Obregon would have won eventually, 
since the present revolution has been of a pure- 
ly military character, and the majority of the 
army officers are strongly attached to their 
former Minister of War. 

But the campaign started badly for Obregon. 
The first encounters between the insurrection- 
ists and the Government troops were indecisive. 
The struggle between Carranza and Obregon 
promised to become something more than a 
mutiny. It was beginning to look like a long 
war that might last months and even years. 



AUTHOR OF CAERANZA'S DOWNFALL 91 

At this moment another person came on the 
scene, much as on the stage, a character who 
has been forgotten in the first act, suddenly 
appears in the last to say the deciding word in 
the drama. It was the respectable, the prudent 
Don Pablo Gonzalez. The blow that this kindly 
gentleman struck Carranza between the eyes 
had real punch behind it. 

Of all the thousands of soldiers that the 
President was collecting around the capital, the 
large units actually organized happened to have 
been all under the conmiand of Don Pablo, 
What troops in the Mexican Army, for that 
matter, have not been commanded by this gen- 
tleman in the course of his long and remunera- 
tive military experience? 

Mutiny at the Bedside 

General Gonzalez slipped out of the city one 
night when Carranza had Obregon only on his 
mind and caused the larger part of his forces 
to mutiny. One might think that the crime of 
mutiny would necessarily be the same under 
one chief as under another. And yet such is 
not the case. The seriousness of the crime de- 
pends upon the name of the leader. Mutiny 



92 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

under Obregon meant certain execution for the 
soldier should he chance to fall into Carranza's 
hands. Mutiny under Don Pablo was some- 
thing much less serious. It had an air of good 
form about it. It smacked of social life. It 
was a sort of parlor frolic. So the battalions 
which Carranza had mobilized raised no objec- 
tion to following Don Pablo. * ' That man knows 
what he is about. He knows which way the 
wind is blowing! We can't go wrong if we go 
with him!" 

Sonora was a long way from Mexico City, 
and the States which Obregon had to traverse' 
were not much nearer. A lot of ground would 
have to be covered and many skirmishes would 
have to be fought. It would be a long time 
before the insurrection reached the capital. 

But the respectable and prudent Don Pablo, 
rising in mutiny almost at the foot of Car- 
ranza's bed, made an unexpected and dramatic 
move, which threw Government expectations 
into confusion within a few hours. 

When Don Venustiano tried to retire to Vera 
Cruz it was already too late. Don Pablo had 
blocked the road. Puebla, moreover, is the key 
to the Mexico City- Vera Cruz line, and Puebla 



AUTHOR OF CAERANZA'S DOWNFALL 93 

happens to be the only city where Gonzalez 
really has a following. Puebla by tradition is 
a reactionary, religiously minded city. It sym- 
pathizes with Don Pablo for lack of a man more 
to its taste. Around the churches in Puebla 
I saw a number of election posters with the 
words, ''If you want religion to be respected, 
if you want peace, vote for Don Pablo Gon- 
zalez." 

Thanks to the kindly enterprise of this ap- 
parently reliable man, Carranza, who thought 
himself still powerful, had to flee on a moment's 
notice, and, as a result, is now a wanderer in 
the mountains. 

His Removal of Zapata 

Such coups are not without precedent in the 
life of Gonzalez. Six months or more ago he 
decided to have done with the rebel Zapata, and 
he made good in his design. Gonzalez has never 
won a battle ; but when it comes to removing a 
nuisance from his path, a man whom he is tired 
of, and when it comes to doing so cleanly, thor- 
oughly and quickly, Don Pablo has no rivals. 

Even the warmest friends of the Government, 
and people who lost no love whatever on 



94 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Zapata, were obliged to protest at the cowardly 
manner in wliicli Don Pablo disposed of him. 
As the story goes he had one of his confidential 
agents, a guerrillero, desert to Zapata with 
several men. Zapata was suspicious of the new: 
arrivals and asked their leader to do something 
spectacular against the Government troops. 
Don Pablo, accordingly, arranged for one of his 
detachments to be surprised by the bandits of 
his agent, who, to convince Zapata of his good 
faith, had all the prisoners taken shot. Zapata, 
in fact, fell into the trap, and soon after he was 
led into an ambuscade and shot down in cold 
blood. 

Thus the heroic Don Pablo was able to add 
to the list of his achievements the death of 
Zapata, which many other Generals had tried to 
accomplish in vain. 

Such a kindly man ! And so respectable ! A 
man you can rely on! Now, after the fall of 
Don Venustiano, he and Obregon are march- 
ing side by side — for the moment. But Obre- 
gon is a literary man, you will remember. He 
is fond of phrases. I can imagine him saying 
of his new comrade in arms: "His kindness 
fills me with terror. ' ' 



AUTHOR OF OARRANZA'S DOWNFALL 95 

A Militant Pacifist 

One of the most amusing spectacles during 
the months preceding the present revolution 
was the mania of all the militarists in Mexico 
for "civilism" or ' ' civilianism. " 

Bonillas was the candidate of ' ' civilism, ' * 
though his leading supporters before the public, 
Candido Aguilar and Montes, were Generals. 

The other candidates, Obregon and Gonzalez, 
insisted, however, that they were just as much 
civilians as the pacific Bonillas. 

"There are no militarists, there is no mili- 
tarism, in this country of ours," Obregon 
would say in his Ciceronian manner. ''The 
professional soldier died with the fall of Don 
Porfirio. We are men of the people, simple 
citizens, who took up arms to defend the cause 
of the revolution. Now with the triumph of 
that revolution, we lay down our arms and be- 
come men like other men." 

And Don Pablo, who thinks there is wisdom 
in few words, said simply: 

"Amen." 

Not only that. The fiery Obregon, ex-Minis- 
ter of War that he was, asked the Government 



96 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

to give him an honorable discharge from the 
army, and he pretended to get angry when any 
one addressed him as ' ' General. ' ' He insisted 
on being nothing but "Citizen Obregon, gar- 
hanzo King of Sonora." 

But Don Pablo did not say "amen" to this. 
Don Pablo went on being a General, although 
he was sure his army would never be large 
enough to suit his tastes. Since it would have 
been hardly appropriate to call himself "Citi- 
zen Gonzalez, proprietor and gentleman," he 
contented himself with making his General's 
uniform look as pacifistic as possible. 

During the elections he spent almost as much 
money on pictures of himself as the Govern- 
ment wasted on the face of Bonillas. Every 
bare wall in the Mexican towns carried a por- 
trait of Don Pablo, with his heavy eyebrows, 
his bushy mustache, and those disturbing eyes, 
which, for the first time, were not obscured by 
the pair of dark glasses. Underneath the pic- 
ture there was a single word, and, that the il- 
literate peasants might understand it better, 
it was written in Latin: "Pax." 

In one of the principal theaters of Mexico, a 
musical revue was given, in which Bonillas was 



AUTHOR OF OARRANZA'S DOWNFALL 97 

made to appear as the shepherdess *^'Flor de 
Te,'* and Obregon made a speech about his gar- 
hanzos and his eagerness to become President 
**even if he had to use the Big Stick to get 
there." But Don Pablo came on in the last act, 
and in the most comic fashion. He wore a bat- 
tle uniform. He had a scowl on his face. Black 
eye-glasses and an enormous mustache added 
to the ferocity of his appearance. Dragging 
an enormous cannon behind him, he advanced 
toward the footlights, and there, in a voice 
which was more like the roar of a hungry lion 
ready to eat the audience, he shouted: ^'I am 
a pacifist." 

"Civilism," *^ peace," all mere hypocrisy! 
"Citizen" Obregon has remained a General, 
and General Gonzalez, the man of peace, has 
played another of the treacherous tricks in 
which he is a specialist. The moment Carranza, 
their former chief and master, decided to give 
the Presidency to some one else, both of these 
men became militarists again, coming to a mo- 
mentary agreement, but without prejudice to 
their privilege of fighting each other to-mor- 
row. Mexico had to have one more revolution I 
There have been so few of them in her history ! 



V. CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 

OF all the men who figured prominently in 
Mexico during the last years of the Car- 
ranza regime — including those who remained 
faithful to the First Chief and those who re- 
belled against him — Carranza came originally 
from the highest social station. 

While the present Generals and Ministers of 
the republic were still humble laborers, petty 
merchants, obscure lawyers, or simply loafers 
without visible means of support, Carranza had 
already been, first, a Senator and, later, a State 
Governor. A silent and reserved man who 
seemed to foresee his future greatness, Don 
Venustiano moved for many years in General 
Diaz's entourage, which eventually came to 
have all the characteristics of a real Court. 

It is interesting to study the portraits of Por- 
firio Diaz at the various periods of his career. 
In the earliest ones he looks like an Indian with 
sharp-pointed pyramidal skull, coarse hair and 
rough features. As the thirty years of his rule 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 99 

wear on, he shows gradual but constant im- 
provement. At the end the Indian had turned 
white. He always wore a simple but elegant 
uniform. It was common gossip that he em- 
ployed expert Parisian specialists to paint his 
lips and whiten his cheeks. 

The society that surrounded Don Porfirio un- 
derwent a similar transformation. The official 
functions given during Diaz's regime eventu- 
ally became as important and ostentatious as 
those given in some of the regal Courts of 
Europe. A Mexican aristocracy grew up around 
President Diaz. In diplomatic circles the balls 
held in the Mexican capital were reputed to be 
the best given in America. I met in Paris the 
owner of a famous restaurant who had at one 
time been Don Porfirio 's chef. 

''He is a real sovereign," the old chef told 
me. *'I don't believe there has been, since the 
days of Napoleon III., a ruler able to give a 
banquet as well as he or with as much pomp and 
ceremony. ' ' 

The Aristocratic Carran^a 

Carranza's association with this republican 
Court had its effect on him, as it did on so many 



100 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

other political personages wliom Diaz converted 
into barons, as it were, of his empire. Don 
Venustiano is a man from the country, a ranch- 
ero, but despite this origin, he has a noble bear- 
ing and easy and distinguished manners, which 
show that he is used to moving in good society. 
He always dresses in black and goes about from 
the early morning hours in a frock coat. Al- 
though this gives him the appearance of a 
magistrate or a professor, he looks more distin- 
guished than all the young men around him, 
who affect the latest fashions with all the ex- 
aggeration and discord of color characteristic 
of the Creole. 

The figure of Don Venustiano helps to create 
this good impression. He is majestically tall, 
muscular and strong despite his years; and 
above all, he is white, pure white. His Spanish 
ancestors came from the Basque Provinces and 
from the Basques he inherited the vigorous 
health and the silent tenacity of that race. As 
I have already stated, there is one somewhat 
grotesque detail in his face — a swollen nose 
with a network of multi-colored veins. But this 
does not show at a distance. The majesty of 
his white flowing beard and the vigor of his 



OAREANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 101 

splendid stature, which gives him the appear- 
ance of an old warrior, seem to hide the defect. 
He reminds you of the conquerors who, three 
centuries ago, after the conquest of Mexico, 
laid aside their armor to devote themselves to 
the development of the mines and the tilling of 
the soil. 

When the revolution made this frock-coated 
man take the field and assume the command of 
troops, he turned out to be a first-class strate- 
gist, from the standpoint of Mexican conditions. 
He always refused to be a General, but the boys 
whom he elevated to that rank never failed to 
ask for his advice or to follow his suggestions. 

I have heard many of them tell of the mili- 
tary talent of the man whom they called the 
First Chief. In the middle of the night, when 
they were fast asleep, he would order them, 
swearing and protesting, to break camp and 
take up another position. He had suspected a 
move from the enemy and, sure enough, the 
enemy would come; but instead of surprising 
Carranza, it would be surprised by the First 
Chief. Like all men born in the country who 
have made long journeys on horseback driving 
herds of cattle, he can read the stars and pre- 



102 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

diet the weather. He knows every irregularity 
in the ground of the whole territory. 

A Fighter Who Won't Quit 

As I write these lines Carranza is giving 
proof of his qualities as a mountain fighter. 
Betrayed by almost all his old friends, sur- 
rounded by enemy forces, his retreat to Vera 
Cruz completely cut off, and the last remnants 
of his loyal troops dispersed, any other man 
would have surrendered resignedly to his fate. 
But the principal virtue of Carranza is his 
tenacity; a tenacity that conquers time and 
space and mocks fate. It is more than prob- 
able that his enemies, infinitely more numerous 
than his escort, will eventually capture him. 

At any rate, whether Carranza is captured 
or succeeds in breaking through the ring which 
his enemies have thrown around him, we have 
to admit that he has defended himself against 
ill-luck in a heroic manner. This man of 64, 
his followers reduced to a mere handful, can 
ride whole days without yielding to the ex- 
haustion of age. He will fight at odds of a 
hundred to one. If his horse is killed under 
him, he immediately mounts another, oalmly 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 103 

facing a rain of bullets fired by the very men 
who swore loj^alty to him. The days are pass- 
ing, and his enemies have not yet succeeded in 
capturing him. 

However great his mistakes may have been, 
we must concede that Carranza is a man of ex- 
traordinary energy and determination. 

Carranza 's Court 

What we might call Carranza 's Court, his in- 
timate circle, had a rather informal and fa- 
miliar aspect. It was something like the co- 
terie of a provincial Governor who has become 
President, without giving up his old habits of 
country life. 

Next to General Barragan, youthful and 
debonair, the man whom Don Venustiano 
treated with greatest intimacy was the major 
domo of his palaces, Don Pancho Serna. This 
Don Pancho, like nearly all the men of the 
revolutionary epoch, was of very humble origin. 
He had a small popular restaurant in the out- 
skirts of Mexico City and, overnight, Don 
Venustiano made him Governor of the Presi- 
dential Mansion, of the Palace of Chapultepec^ 



104 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

and of a third residence located in the fortress 
of San Juan de Ulua in Vera Cruz. 

The former restaurant keeper, a jovial man 
accustomed to flattering his patrons, kept his 
old good humor, changing only his manner of 
dress to meet the demands of his new dignity. 
Every morning, the minute he tumbled out of 
bed, he put on his' frock coat. His position did 
not permit him to dress in any other way. The 
only garment that he varied with any frequency 
was his vest, of silk or velvet, as the case might 
be, but always in brilliantly colored checks. 
Over it he always wore a rich gold chain. 

As long as Senora Carranza lived, Don 
Pancho Serna's star did not rise to its full 
glory. The first lady of the land had no use 
for the major domo. But when Don Venusti- 
ano's wife died eight months ago the major 
domo became the absolute master of the Presi- 
dential Palaces and of the President's affection. 

The Master of the Banquet Table 

The former restaurateur always sat at the 
Presidential table no matter how formal the 
banquet might be, and we must confess that he 
did not look out of place among the guests ; 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 105 

because he confined himself to smiling discreet- 
ly and nodding his approval to everything that 
was said. After the dinner, prompted by pro- 
fessional instinct, as if he were still in charge 
of his old restaurant, he would always try to 
find out if the guests were satisfied with the 
service. I remember that on one occasion at 
the end of a luncheon I attended with President 
Carran^a in the Palace of Chapultepeo, Don 
Pancho led me aside to ask me what I thought 
of the luncheon. His was the anxiety of an ar- 
tist who fears for the success of his work with 
a critic come from foreign parts. 

''It was splendid, Don Pancho, '^ I replied. 
"The best restaurants on the Parisian boule- 
vards cannot put up a better meal." 

You should have seen the seraphic smile of 
Don Pancho. At that moment I must have 
seemed to him the most agreeable man on earth. 

After that he showed me the rooms of the 
Chapultepec palace, furnished during Emperor 
Maximilian's reign. As the monarch's reign 
was very brief, there is nothing extraordinary 
about the furnishings. All they have is a few 
porcelains and pieces of furniture given by 
Napoleon HI. But Don Pancho has never been 



106 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

outside of Mexico and he asked me, with a 
doubtful air, if the palaces of Europe had rooms 
as beautiful as those of Chapultepec. 

''I am dying to go to Madrid to see its mu- 
seums and to admire the pictures of the famous 
painter Belasco." 

Don Pancho spoke to me frequently about 
this unknown painter with great enthusiasm. 

"Who the deuce can this man Belasco be?" 
I asked myself. And it was long afterward that 
it dawned on me that Don Pancho was thinking 
of Velazquez. 

There is no doubt, however, that Don 
Venustiano's major domo is a man of exquisite 
taste. Everybody in Mexico City talked to me 
about the residence he is building for himself 
in the most handsome park in the capital. It 
is a house in colonial style of very considerable 
proportions. Such are the mysteries of Mex- 
ico! Six years ago this man was nothing but 
the keeper of a popular restaurant on the out- 
skirts of the city. Now he owns an artistio 
mansion in a location corresponding to Cen- 
tral Park in New York. His enemies explain 
the transformation by the fact that the Presi* 
dent had given him a monopoly of all the meala 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FABOLY 107 

served in the dining cars on the Mexican rail- 
ways. The privilege, certainly, was not out of 
keeping with Don Pancho's previous occupa- 
tion. However, the story was not true. 

A "Carranza Doctrine" (Subsidized) 

Carranza, people assert, disposed of this din- 
ing-car business, in order to reward the literary 
labors of a young lady (a former stenographer 
or telegraph clerk, I don't remember which) 
who is his favorite author. The girl placed her- 
self under his orders early in the revolution 
and went with him everywhere. 

This young ''lady of letters" invented, and 
expounded in several volumes, the so-called 
"Carranza Doctrine." Monroe had his doc- 
trine! Why shouldn't Carranza have one, too? 
Just as Obregon, aspiring to be an author as 
well as a warrior, wrote the story of his cam- 
paigns, Carranza, to go down in history as 
something more than a President, entered the 
field of international law. However, he was 
not a writer. The young lady wielded the pen, 
while the ''old man" revised the text, made 
suggestions and furnished ideas. 

The world has paid no attention to the * ' docr- 



108 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

trine," but the lady who expounded it has de- 
rived no end of profit from it. She receives 
subsidies to propagate the Carranzist philoso- 
phy all over the continent; and the privilege, 
moreover, of feeding travelers on the trains of 
Mexico. 

The dear senorita ! I remember my journey 
from the frontier to the capital. All the food 
is canned, and canned goods seem to be classi- 
fied, in Mexico, like wines. The older, the bet- 
ter! It took me several days to get over my 
ptomaine and the resulting indigestion. The 
' ' Carranza doctrine ' ' may be all right, but they 
should not charge so much for it. 

Fortunes in Revolution MaMng 

In Mexico nobody is surprised at great for- 
tunes rapidly made. But recently ''good busi- 
ness" has not been so common, and such suc- 
cesses have been confined exclusively to men 
connected with the Government. ''You ought 
to have seen the early days of the revolution ! ' ' 
many people said to me. "That was the time 
when money was made!" People got rich not 
only at home in Mexico, but by doing business 
with Mexico from the United States. Many 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 109 

Mexicans made millions without leaving New 
York. 

The moment of greatest prosperity was what 
may be called the second period of the revoln- 
tion, when Villa, Zapata and others were con- 
trolling the north of the republic, while Car- 
ranza held the south. There was also a third 
section of the country, Yucatan, where General 
Alvarado, Carranza's agent, was exercising a 
Socialist dictatorship on his own account, and, 
in the clutch of an attack of graphophobia, was 
legislating for everything human and divine in 
literally hundreds of decrees that he composed 
each day. 

At that time, they say, there were three agen- 
cies in New York, run by influential Mexicans, 
some of whom were with Villa, others with 
Carranza and others with Alvarado. I do not 
believe that any one of these leaders made any- 
thing out of the New York agencies. They 
complied, out of political camaraderie, with the 
requests the agencies made of them. The Mexi- 
can landowner expelled from Mexico would 
turn, the moment he ran out of money on Broad- 
way, to the agency representing the part of 



110 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

the country where his property was located. 
Confiscation was the terrible weapon of the 
Mexican revolution. Some of these confisca- 
tions were made at the expense of political ene- 
mies of the triumphant regime, but more often 
they fell upon private individuals, who had 
taken no part whatever in politics: and whose 
only crime was that of owning something. It 
was quite proper to solve the social problem 
by dividing the land of the rich among the poor ! 
And those who held that doctrine began by 
seizing the lands of the wealthy. Several years 
have passed, however, and the poor still own 
very little land! Property would lie around, 
under a decree of seizure, in the hands of Gov- 
ernment employees or Generals who, country 
people for the most part, had a good idea of 
what land was worth. The former owners 
would apply to one of these agencies for the 
recovery of their lands, and they would put up 
thousands of dollars to get back their titles, 
with permission to return to the country. 

How One Profiteer Explained It 

Then there was brokerage! All sorts of se- 
cret deals were made between the Ministry of 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 111 

"Ways and Means in Mexico and business men 
in the United States, and enormous commis- 
sions were paid to the intermediaries. I know, 
and everybody in Mexico knows, a gentleman 
who six years ago was what they called a pe- 
lade, a ''down-and-out,'* and who to-day owns 
a splendid house in New York. This change in 
luck was so rapid, so astonishing, so brazen, 
that Don Venustiano himself got his eye on the 
man, who was summoned to Mexico to explain 
his mysterious prosperity. The "old man" 
was in an ugly humor and talked of jail and 
the firing squad, if necessary, for the grafters. 
But the accused gentleman calmly justified him- 
self; 

"Mr. President, you have never been out of 
Mexico. You have never been in the United 
States. That's why you don't understand my 
making a fortune in a few years. I have friends 
in New York who boosted me, that's all. In 
New York you go to the theater, and your neigh- 
bor in the next seat is a millionaire. He takes 
a fancy to you and lets you in on something 
that makes you a wealthy man in a few weeks. ' ' 

He talked so well that Don Venustiano be- 
gan to think New York must be a city where 



112 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

everybody is rich and where you cannot walk 
down Lower Broadway without stubbing your 
toe on a million-dollar roll. 

Another personage in Carranza's entourage 
was Aguirre Berlanga, Minister of the Interior. 
This country lawyer held that confidential post 
a long time without any one's knowing why. 
Some unexplainable caprice of the Presi- 
dent! . . . 

The noteworthy thing in Berlanga 's record 
was that he had been the most ardent pro-Ger- 
man in Mexico. All the men in the Government 
were pro-Germans, but he surpassed them all 
in this respect, and that is the only respect in 
which he ever surpassed anybody his whole life 
long. 

The job of this humdrum and ignorant lawyer 
as Minister of the Interior was to supervise 
subsidies to the newspapers. It is well known 
that a part of the Mexican press is supported 
by the Government and changes policy as rap- 
idly as Governments themselves change. Dur- 
ing the years of the war, the Minister of the 
Interior devoted aU his money and all his in- 
fluence to sustaining the pro-German papers 



CAERANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 113 

and persecuting the few dailies wMcli sym- 
pathized with the cause of the Allies. 

On my travels through Mexico I met many 
people who had sided with the cause of world 
freedom during the war. But they were writ- 
ers and teachers, people who follow intellectual 
professions and hold quite aloof from politics. 
The politicians and Generals were all pro-Ger- 
man, with one exception — Don Pablo Gonzalez. 
That far-sighted gentleman predicted the vic- 
tory of the Allies from the very first, while his 
less-intelligent comrades, who call themselves 
revolutionaries and Socialists, were wrapped in 
admiration for the glory and ability of William 
HohenzoUem. 

Carranza's "Neutrality" 

Carranza, who had never been abroad, who 
knew the world only second hand and was under 
the influence of a daring intriguer, the German 
Minister resident in Mexico, acted badly and 
deceitfully in every matter relating to the war^ 
He tried to justify all he did on the plea of neu- 
trality, a very special kind of neutrality, which 
was never anything more than a disguise for 
favoritism toward Germany. Many will re- 



114 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

member his note to the neutral nations asking 
them to agree not to furnish food or goods of 
any kind to any of the belligerents. Since Ger- 
many had been swept off the sea and could get 
nothing from distant nations, Carranza's pro- 
posal could logically serve only to keep supplies 
from the Allies. 

However, let us not dwell on that. There is 
no occasion to-day for insisting on Carranza's 
past pro-Germanism. What many people can- 
not explain is his retention, up to the very last, 
of Aguirre Berlanga as Minister of the Interior. 
This insignificant lawyer and kowtower to the 
Germans is a young chap who listens to him- 
self when he talks ; and he talks on every ques- 
tion under the sun, treating them all with the 
same competence. His importunateness, lack 
of tact, and assertive ignorance, as well as the 
unfriendliness that met him everywhere, be- 
came long ago proverbial in Mexico. 

The Chamber of Deputies was constituted in 
great majority by friends of Carranza. Well, 
whenever the President wanted a law passed 
it was sufficient for Berlanga to support it, for 
everybody to vote against it When the Car- 
ranza majority was most compact one speech 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 115 

by that gentleman was enough to split it into 
factions. Nevertheless, when people talked to 
Don Venustiano about his Minister of the In- 
terior the "old man's" eyes would twinkle 
shrewdly, a smile would flit over his bewhis- 
kered face, and he would come to Berlanga's 
support. 

Why He Stood by Berlanga 

It was a case of personal vanity. Men of 
strong will, men who delight in power, like to 
surround themselves with nonentities to use as 
mirrors for the reflection of their own delight- 
ful greatness. ''What a great man am I to 
have made a somebody out of that idiot!" 
Carranza doubtless felt like the Eoman Em- 
peror who made his horse a Consul. 

I owe one courtesy to Don Venustiano, for 
which I should thank him here. He invited me 
to luncheon with the most prominent of his as- 
sistants and friends, and omitted his Minister 
of the Interior from the list of guests. It oc- 
curred to him, perhaps, that I should not care 
to sit at table with the representative of Ger- 
man interests in Mexico who supervised all the 
intrigues there against the European Allies and 



116 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

the United States of America. Or perhaps, to 
avoid seeing me laugh at a man in his Ministry, 
he preferred to take no chances on any inepti- 
tudes Berlanga might get off in his pedantic 
tone during the meal. 

I have been constantly wondering what can 
have happened to Aguirre Berlanga during 
these last days. Did he slip off to a safe place, 
or did some noble impulse prompt him to stand 
by his patron in time of misfortune? Then, 
again, I cannot help laughing when I think of 
a queer kind of popularity that Berlanga en- 
joyed. When a Mexican tried to estimate the 
stupidity of anybody, he would invariably say: 
''He is a bigger fool than the Minister of the 
Interior." Enough said! 

All Honest in Politics — to Politicians 

Beyond any doubt, the people of Mexico are 
tired of so many revolutions. After each revo- 
lution, everybody thinks: ''This is going to 
be the very last. We shall never have such 
trouble again." But since, within a few 
months, or a few years, another upset invari- 
ably appears, people have finally come to take 
revolution as a matter of course, much as an 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 117 

invalid gets accustomed to his pain. They even 
reach the point where they can joke over their 
troubles, meeting- each new political overturn 
with good humor and getting all the fun out of 
it they can. 

All the funny stories about Mexico and the 
republic's present leaders were invented by 
Mexicans themselves, and not Mexicans living 
abroad for long periods of time, but those who 
have stayed at home and actually seen men and 
events close at hand. 

I noticed one curious thing in Mexico. When 
one Mexican politician is talking about another 
of the opposite camp, he never calls his oppon- 
ent's honesty into question. In the heat of po- 
litical passion, he may doubt his enemy's per- 
sonal qualifications and his reliability. He will 
call him a sneak and a liar. He will question 
the fidelity of the man's wife and the virtue 
of the man's mother. "He is a thoroughgoing 
scoundrel," he concludes, ''but I must say that 
in money matters he is absolutely straight, and, 
in spite of what people say, he is really a poor 
man." And the man he is talking about says 
the same things about him. 

There seems to be a tacit understanding 



118 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

among them all to tell the truth about each 
other on every point except money. They are 
all anxious to make the point that there is not 
a single thief in Mexican political life. On the 
other hand, the lower class, the common people, 
which has been putting up with revolutions for 
years and years, and is always seeing its coun- 
try go down hill instead of improving, smiles 
a smile of bitter skepticism when the words 
''unselfishness" and ''patriotism" are men- 
tioned. 

Only the Masses Resentful 

Two hundred thousand Mexicans get their 
living by making civil Avar and taking part in 
revolutions, fattening on the ruins of Govern- 
ments that fall and on the inaugural feasts of 
Governments that come into being. Such peo- 
ple speak in all seriousness when they say that 
"Liberfy must be preserved" or allege that 
"the Constitution is being violated." Poor 
Constitution is the most frequently ravished 
virgin in Mexico ! But the rest of the popula- 
tion, which includes millions of people, either 
says nothing, with that significant silence of the 
Indian, or else it says: "Liberty! Constitu- 



CARRANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 119 

tion! Mere pretexts for a new grab. Just 
ways of making a living! All alike! All 
thieves !" And in tMs sweeping generalization 
it includes everybody in politics, pardoning no 
one, not even those who have come to a tragic 
death. 

The Mexican people, which has a certain lit- 
erary instinct and much imagination, invents 
all kinds of ingenious and interesting stories to 
wreak vengeance on the powers that be. Its 
biting satire respects not even death. The mis- 
erable populace has suffered so much and has 
so many accounts to settle! 

Tragedy of Carranza's Brother 

The story of what happened to Don Jesus 
Carranza, after his death, is a cruel but inter- 
esting and witty tale. This brother of Don 
Venustiano came to a tragic end. While Car- 
ranza was shut up in Vera Cruz by the troops 
of Zapata and Villa, he sent his brother on an 
expedition to the south of Mexico. The very 
escort which Don Venustiano had given Don 
Jesus for protection rose in mutiny and made 
him prisoner. Such jokes are nothing unusual 
in Mexican revolutions. No one knows with 



120 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

certainty on whom he can count. You never 
know whether a friend on embracing you will 
not stab you in the back. 

Don Jesus, with all his staff, fell into the 
hand of one of the petty chieftains hostile to 
Don Venustiano, and a dramatic episode oc- 
curred. The guerrilla telegraphed to the Presi- 
dent, making on him a number of demands, of 
a political nature, which were equivalent to an 
abdication. He accompanied his demands with 
a threat to execute Carranza's brother if they 
were not granted. The proud and stubborn 
Don Venustiano made no answer; whereupon 
the guerrilla began to shoot, one by one, the 
members of the staff of Don Jesus. After a 
second failure of the President to answer, a 
son of Don Jesus, and nephew to Don Venusti- 
ano, was shot. A final telegram likewise failed 
to move the iron will of Carranza, and his 
brother was also executed, some hours before 
the Carranzista troops, sent to free him, ar- 
rived. 

This blood-curdling episode aroused sjth- 
pathy only among the partisans of the Presi- 
dent. A few small villages took the name of 
Don Jesus, but they have probably lost it again 



CAREANZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 121 

by this time. But while the friends of the Gov- 
ernment were mourning the martyr, the peo- 
ple, that great anonymous novelist, was. ham- 
mering out his story. 

Tale the People Invented About It 

It must be recalled that,, at the beginning of 
the revolution, while Don Venustiano was mak- 
ing war on the partisans of Huerta in a num- 
ber of States, Don Jesus had been in command 
of a division on the frontier of the United 
States. I was, of course, not a witness of his 
campaign, but people in Mexico say that this 
Carranza was a real Napoleon when it came to 
driving owners away from ranches and carry- 
ing off cattle. 

No animal wearing horns would ever escape 
him. They all succumbed to his irresistible 
spirit on attack. In a very few of such cam- 
paigns he swept the territories under his con- 
trol absolutely clean of cattle. Then he would 
drive his prisoners, which numbered thousands 
and thousands, up across the American frontier, 
and generously hand them over to buyers in 
the United States, in exchange for some little 
slips of paper issued by the banks. 



122 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

At this point, the Mexican story begins. 
When Don Jesus died he went straight to hell. 
Where else could he go? ... At that time 
there was war, not only in Mexico but in the 
greater part of Europe as well. You may read- 
ily imagine the great number of guests who 
were being admitted to hell. What a lot of in- 
cendiaries of cities! And murderers! And 
thieves ! 

Satan, who knows everything, got wind of 
Don Jesus 's arrival and was anxious to make 
his acquaintance. As the devil has horns and 
a cloven foot, he was interested in getting a 
close-up view of this invincible persecutor of 
horned and hoofed animals. 

** Where is Jesus Carranza?" he shouted 
from his throne. 

Absolute silence. The man in question did 
not want to appear, he was so alarmed by the 
interest aroused. As the last consignment re- 
ceived in hell consisted of so many lost souls, 
he tried to keep out of sight, hiding behind his 
comrades. 

Several small imps, obeying orders from 
their master, went through the groups, paging 
the missing person much as bellboys go through 



CAERAHZA'S OFFICIAL FAMILY 123 

the corridors of a hotel when they have to de- 
liver a message. 

"Mister Carranza! Mister Carranza!" 

Another long silence. And Satan, annoyed 
at this lack of respect, called one of his clever- 
est little devils. 

"Turn into a cow," he ordered him. 

Immediately there was a moo, and a fine 
cow, fiery in color, began to run loose through 
the throngs. 

But there was one there who could mn faster 
than the cow. A man leaped over the crowd 
with the speed of a bullet, panting with greed, 
and grabbed the animal's tail. Then he seized 
the animal by the horns. "You cannot escape 
me, you cannot escape me ! You are mine ! ' ' 

That's how Satan discovered Don Jesus Car- 
ranza. 



VI. CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 

WHEN we speak of Mexico and of the 
absurd things which occur there, many 
people imagine that that country is a half -sav- 
age nation whose normal condition is a state 
of violent revolution; a nation, in short, that 
has no conception of the duties of civihzed peo- 
ples. 

Those who hold this opinion of Mexico are 
wholly mistaken, though their error is not at 
all surprising. All nations, however advanced 
they may be, always misunderstand the real 
character of the neighbors across their fron- 
tiers. It would seem that nations feel in duty 
bound to misunderstand and slander one an- 
other. It is not strange, then, that Mexico 
should be misunderstood. The Mexicans, 
themselves, and I include among them the rul- 
ing classes, also lack a proper understanding 
of foreign countries. 

It may be stated that Mexico is as civilized 
as any of the other countries of Spanish-speak- 

124 



CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 125 

ing America; bnt she has been extraordinarily 
unfortunate. 

The history of Mexico during the last fifty 
years may be summarized as follows: those 
who tried to civilize her either did not know 
how or else did not care to complete their work ; 
and their successors not only failed to complete 
the work of civilization, but, blinded by po- 
litical fanaticism, they destroyed a great deal 
of what their predecessors had accomplishedo 

I have never been an admirer of Porfirio 
Diaz. He was simply a tyrant. The peace that 
he maintained for thirty years was secured by 
wholesale executions, ordered without due 
process of law, and by violations of the liber- 
ties of the individual. During his thirty years 
of rule he caused the death, by secret and under- 
handed ways, of more people, perhaps, than 
have fallen in all the battlesi of revolution. 
Moreover, although with his dictatorial powers 
he could have given a great impetus to public 
education in his illiterate country, he preferred 
to keep the people ignorant. Politically and 
spiritually, the long reign of Porfirio Diaz was 
a misfortune for Mexico; but we must admit, 
in all justice, that so far as material progress 



126 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

goes, Mexico never had another ruler that could 
compare with this man. 

What Diaz Did for Mexico 

Every conspicuously modem thing that Mex- 
ico has to-day she owes to General Diaz. The 
great buildings in the cities, pubUc sanitation, 
the railways, harbor improvements, school 
buildings for the better classes — all these date 
from the time of Don Porfirio. One is amazed 
to see the amount of building done or half -com- 
pleted during the time of this tyrant. He kept 
the spirit of his people in fetters, but he suc- 
ceeded in giving the country the outward ap- 
pearance of a nation. 

In one particular he succeeded admirably, 
well. Mexico is a country that has inherited 
from the Indian a certain tendency to hate all 
foreigners, to shun them with an irresistible 
aversion or to harass them whenever possible. 
But Diaz realized that his country would be all 
the greater and more enlightened in proportion 
as it kept in contact with the rest of the world. 

His glorious predecessor, Benito Juarez, for 
whom every man of democratic ideals must feel 
a deep interest and sympathy, had, neverthe- 



CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 127 

less, a great defect. He was an Indian, and 
through an irresistible racial instinct he dis- 
trusted all foreigners and tried to avoid them. 
As he was patriotic, and, after the imperial ad- 
venture of Maximilian, had misgivings about 
the possible effects of foreign influence on his 
country, he tried to keep his nation in the 
geographical isolation in which it had lived. 
The coastline of Mexico continued to be a mere 
coastline without ports, and the north of the 
republic continued a desert to constitute an al- 
most impassable barrier between the United 
States and the vital center of Mexican life. 

Porfirio Diaz reversed the policy of Benito 
Juarez. He opened the ports and thus placed 
his nation in more frequent communication 
with Europe; he laid several railway lines 
which brought Mexico into contact with the 
United States. He took pains to develop the 
resources of the country favoring the creation 
of new industries, stimulating the development 
of the mines and aiding directly the discovery 
of the oil wells, an industry which grew in the 
last years of his rule. 

During this period Mexico did not have lib- 
erty, but it had peace and prosperity. 



128 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

The "Cientificos" 

A group of intelligent men whom the publio 
sarcastically nicknamed los cientiflcos, who 
eventually adopted this title themselves, placed 
themselves at the orders of the former warrior, 
now become dictator, and cooperated with him. 
There were Ministers who held portfolios for 
thirty years without interruption. The people 
naturally found tliis tutelage too long — so long, 
indeed, that the annals of absolute monarchy 
scarcely show a similar example. The revolu- 
tion had to come. When it did come the people 
of the whole country, some because they wanted 
liberty and others because they desired a 
change after such a long period of inertia, fol- 
lowed the revolutionary^ path. 

To-day, after ten years, observers begin to 
realize that the revolution has been of little use. 
There was no more liberty under Carranza than 
there had been under Don Porfirio, and, on 
the other hand, peace and prosperity had en- 
tirely disappeared. 

The revolutionary Governments did not do 
anything new. What Mexico has to-day she al- 
ready had under Diaz, except that now every- 



CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 129 

thing is older, almost in ruins, like a building 
which gradually deteriorates for lack of some 
one to take care of it and repair the damage 
caused by time. 

Moreover, the country has not gained any- 
thing in morality. When General Diaz was in 
power the people complained, as they do now, 
about the lack of honesty of their rulers, and 
they called the cierdificos of those days thieves 
just as sincerely as later they accused the revo- 
lutionists. 

Perhaps the people were right. I have not 
seen at close range the men who ruled the coun- 
try under Diaz. But it seems that poor Mex- 
ico is cursed with an endless succession of 
money-mad politicians. 

But if the cientificos were really thieves they 
differed from their successors in a particular 
well worthy of consideration. The former were 
constructive in their thieving, while the latter 
have been nothing but vandals. The cientificos^ 
did not squeeze their money from private indi- 
viduals ; they enriched themselves with the com- 
missions received from public works which ren- 
dered good service to the country. Moreover, 
they got rich slowly. They took thirty years 



130 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

to make their fortunes; as they were not in a 
hurry, they collected their graft "with prudence 
and dignity, knowing full well that their Gov- 
ernment was long-lived, and there was no need 
of any unseemly haste. But the latter-day 
thieves have been rapid-fire grafters, robbers 
of machine-gun rapidity, who knew they had 
only a few years in which to get rich, and so 
had to steal as fast as possible. 

Mexico's Pitiable State To-day 

Mexico to-day is in a pitiable plight. Of the 
former railways scarcely more than the tracks 
remain. The Government of Carranza took 
over the lines without compensating the own- 
ers. It operated them for several years, kept 
all the revenues and failed to renew any part 
of the rolling stock. The railway properties 
consist to-day of a few hundred old cars in 
very poor condition and some patched-up and 
asthmatic locomotives which serve sometimes 
to carry passengers who are not in a hurry, 
and other times to gratify the amazing genius 
the insurgents have for dynamiting trains. 
The sleeping cars are full of vermin, and their 
lighting apparatus is in such a state that it 



CONDITION OF THE OOUNTHY 131 

frequently fails to work and the trains have to 
be lighted with candles. 

Many of the stations are mere shacks stand- 
ing near a heap of black ruins, the ruins being 
all that is left of a former station burnt a few 
years before by the revolutionists. Further 
on, one can see dozens of wrecked cars, mere 
skeletons, their iron frames blackened and 
twisted as if they were still suffering the tor- 
ture of the explosion that destroyed them. 

The ports are losing their traffic more and 
more every day. In cities which were prosper- 
ous once, like Vera Cruz, you can see the steve- 
dores standing about in the sun, their arms 
folded across the breast, with nothing to do. 

That fertile country, one of the richest in the 
world, can produce three annual crops, and yet 
it is barely raising enough food to feed its 
population. Instead of advancing, agriculture 
has declined. Cattlemen, tired of raising cattle 
to feed the revolutionists, have gone out of busi- 
ness. The farmers frequently find themselves 
left in the lurch by their peons who believe 
that to shoulder a musket and follow Villa, Car- 
ranza, or Obregon, as the case may be, is better 
than to hoe the ground. 



132 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

The only export industries of the country are 
the mines, which are little worked; the sizal, 
produced in Yucatan, and the Tampico oil wells. 
As these are the only sources of wealth which 
yield an income, the Government taxes them 
heavily. The oil companies especially, the ma- 
jority of which are owned by American citi- 
zens, had been paying Carranza, in one form 
of taxation or another, about 40 per cent, of 
the value of their daily output. A General who 
is one of Obregon's lieutenants admits in one 
of his writings that the taxes paid by the oil 
dompanies are formidable. However, if the 
oil companies failed to pay their taxes for three 
months the Government of Mexico could not 
survive financially, because the oil taxes are 
the only reliable source of income that it has. 

A really painful contrast between what Mex- 
ico is and what it could become if the country 
had a half decent Government strikes the most 
casual observer. 

Peasants Starving in a Rich Land 

A common sight in Mexico is the peasant, 
with his large, umbrella-like straw hat and red 
poncho, squatting on the ground in an attitude 



COmJITION OF THE C0U3WRY 133 

of profound thought, although perhaps in real- 
ity he is not thinking at all. Hours later you 
go by the same spot again and find the man 
sitting in the same position and still thinking.; 
He has not moved. He has not done anything. 
Perhaps he has eaten a corn tortilla, which con- 
stitutes the principal article of his diet. And 
this poor wretch, who is suffering material hun- 
ger and moral anaemia, sits upon one of the 
richest thrones of the earth. The soil beneath 
him treasures gold, silver and petroleum, and 
it can produce 90 per cent, of all the different 
agricultural products known to man. 

That peasant is disillusioned ; he is a fatalist 
resigned to his destiny. He has been shedding 
his blood for ten years in battle after battle, 
always in the name of liberty. And he does 
not see liberty anywhere. The men who gov- 
ern his native village and province have the 
same vices as those who ruled them in the days 
of General Diaz. They made this illiterate be- 
lieve that everything that Mexico contained 
was going to be distributed among the people. 
He saw how the property of the rich was con- 
fiscated; but he is still waiting to see it dis- 
tributed among the poor. Those who were rich 



134 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

by heritage or tradition were succeeded by 
newly made men of wealth, by men whom he 
had known before as comrades in poverty. 

All his! And the Mexican, thinking about 
these things, either remains passive the live- 
long day watching the trend of events, or else 
he joins those who have risen in the social scale, 
and hopes that civil war may last forever, that 
a revolution may break out every year, that no 
party may last too long in power, and that Gov- 
ernments may succeed one another frequently 
in order that all may eventually get a taste of 
the pleasures and profits of being *'in." 

Suppose the American Government in Wash- 
ington should issue a new series of paper 
money some day, declaring it legal tender. 
Every one accepts it. Then the Government, 
should any one question the money, declares 
repeatedly that the debt represented by the 
paper is sacred and that it will be scrupulously 
paid at the first convenient moment. Then sup- 
pose the same Government suddenly decrees 
that the paper is worth nothing; that the State 
does not recognize the promise inscribed on 
the face of its notes, and that not a cent will be 
paid on any of them. The financial organism 



CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 135 

of the country, of course, would collapse. 

Such a thing would, indeed, seem impossible. 
It is hard to imagine it happening in any coun- 
try on the face of the earth. 

Well, ithappenedin Mexico — notonce,huttwice. 

The Carranza Government on two different 
occasions issued paper money which it forced 
upon the Mexican public as legal tender and 
later repudiated, a robbery more irritating 
than any looting ever committed by party chief- 
tains in the country, since it embraced the 
whole nation in the ruin it caused. 

Eecently, a few weeks before the revolution 
which overthrew it, the Government launched 
a new series of notes, but without daring to 
make it legal tender. Everybody, in the con- 
viction that it would prove valueless eventually, 
refused to take it. 

Carranza 's jack of all financial trades was 
Luis Cabrera, a lawyer. I need not draw a 
portrait of Cabrera, for he has been in the 
United States frequently and is well known 
here. Cabrera has a good literary education 
and writes well. He was the pen and style of 
Don Venustiano, and when the President 
wanted to stab some enemy to the quick he 



136 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

sent for his Minister of Finance. Many unfor- 
tunate decrees went out under Carranza's name 
and signature, but Cabrera, in reality, was their 
author. 

Cabrera Councilor at the Elbow 

For four years, Cabrera played the role of an 
astute councilor at Carranza's side, suggesting 
ways out of many a tight hole. I must pay 
homage to Cabrera's literary talent. He would 
have made an excellent professor of criticism. 
It was only the lack of logic in the revolution, 
the lack of enough good men to go around, that 
forced him to become a Minister of Finance. He 
often used his ability as a writer to bamboozle 
the public into believing that under Don 
Venustiano 's rule, it was living in greater pros- 
perity than ever before. He was always prov- 
ing the existence of a superavit, an excess of in- 
come over outlay; but this was true only be- 
cause the creditors to the Mexican debt (a mat- 
ter of hundreds of millions) had received no in- 
terest for many years; because public service 
had been abandoned in many ways ; because not 
a cent had been given to the school teachers 
(whom the Government threw back upon the 
towns, while the towns, with no means of rais- 



CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 137 

ing the necessary funds, simply closed the 
schools). 

Cabrera has a sense of humor, with a dash 
of cjmicism in it. In his efforts to get a for- 
eign loan, without which no Government in 
Mexico, whatever it is, can long survive, he 
must have laughed to himself many times as he 
reread the elegant fabrications that issued from 
his pen, to amuse the Mexican public and throw 
dust in the eyes of the United States bankers. 
As the reader will surmise, the people hated 
Cabrera, because he was the personification of 
taxes, more taxes, and heavier taxes; and then 
because of the gossip about his private affairs 
and the big deals he pulled off personally from 
the vantage ground of the ministry. Of this 
unpopularity he was himself aware, and he 
used to say ironically: '^I have the honor of 
being the first and most distinguished thief in 
Mexico. ' * 

It is to his credit that he never batted an 
eyelash before the attacks made upon him. 
Lawyer Cabrera is a peace-loving man. He 
fought the war through under Carranza, but he 
was, like Bonillas, always with the rear guard 
as part of the administrative baggage. But 



138 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

this did not prevent his having in his life a 
dose of that tragic fatalism all the Mexicans 
mixed up in the revolution have. Two of his 
brothers fell before a firing squad. Luis 
Cabrera himself would undoubtedly have been 
shot at this moment if the populace of Mexico 
City had found him lying loose somewhere at 
the time of Don Venustiano's flight. But like 
a rat deserting a sinking ship, he made good 
his escape several days in advance, leaving Car- 
ranza to his fate. 

In times of peace, when he felt himself secure 
under the power that every Government has, 
his audacity and self-possession were some- 
thing that inspired awe. When his enemies 
would accuse him of having amassed a huge for- 
tune in the Ministry, he would answer in a pub- 
lished article, offering to hand over all his 
gains to anybody who could locate them. He 
was a poor man — as poor as a monk in the 
desert. At first this boldness succeeded with 
the public; but after a while it produced onl^ 
laughter. 

Carranza Sound at the Last 

The most terrible thing in the history of 
Mexico, and the principal cause, in my judg- 



CONDITION OF THE COUNTEY 139 

ment, of its abnormal condition, is that the 
country has always been governed by Generals, 
or, rather, by *' rough riders" from the country 
districts — men expert with the machete who are 
suddenly put in charge of bodies of soldiers. 
There have been some civilian Governments, 
but they have been few and far between, like 
islands lost in the sea. As every Government 
has been the product of a revolution, the man 
in control has always been a guerrillero, bolder 
than his comrades, or more clever in leading 
and exploiting them. 

For that reason, Carranza's policy of having 
done with militarism once and for all, by put- 
ting in the Presidential chair a thorough-going 
civilian, was a sound one, and exactly what the 
country needed. The fallacy in it was his choice 
of an unsuitable and unpopular candidate im- 
ported from abroad, and the violent method he 
resorted to in carrying it out. 

"Are there not people in Mexico," the reader 
may ask, '^ sufficiently distinguished to make 
up a purely civilian government, like those of 
other countries?" Undoubtedly there are, and 
perhaps there are more such promising civilians 
than in any other republic of the Latin- 



140 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Americas. Mexico differs from the other re- 
publics in its racial composition. In the most 
progressive Spanish- American nations, the 
white element predominates and is in control of 
public affairs. In Mexico, the native Indians 
are so numerous and the whites so few, that 
the latter, as a result of the revolutions, are, 
one may say, slaves of the former. In Mexico 
there are, roughly, a million and a half whites 
against some fourteen million copper colored 
people, Indians and half-breeds. The Indian 
of pure blood is a passive element in the popu- 
lation and figures as mere landscape in the 
country. The real source of trouble is the half- 
breed, who seems to have taken over the ap- 
petites and evil passions of both races, without 
inheriting any of the virtues of either. 

Why an Intellectual Can't Be President 

From the families of pure white stock come, 
as a rule, the people of studious bent, the ''in- 
tellectuals," who contribute moral prestige to 
their country. It is safe to say that Mexico 
has given more eminent figures to Spanish lit- 
erature than any other of the Spanish- Amer- 
ican countries. The population in general has 



CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 141 

great fondness for art, an instinctive taste for 
music, a passion for literature and a veritable 
reverence for science. But these polished 
classes — the whites, that is — ^have rarely seen 
one of their number in the Presidential chair. 

The distinguished man of education in Mex- 
ico may be a famous professor, a great lawyer, 
a splendid physician. He may become a jour- 
nalist and pass on to Congress, as deputy or 
Senator. He may even get as high as a Minis- 
ter's Portfolio. His chance for the Presidency 
is very slight. To become President you must 
have been a good horseman, deft with the 
machete; and such experts are commonest 
among the copper colored elements. Some In- 
dian blood, at least, is necessary to be eligible 
for the office of Chief Executive. 

Had Clemenceau, Lloyd George, or any other 
political leader of the Old World been born in 
Mexico, the pinnacle of their ambition would 
have been the office of Minister of Education in 
a country without schools — the only high posi- 
tion reached by the many men of culture Mex- 
ico has produced in past years. 

I believe it impossible, while the nation is as 
it is at present, for Mexico to have a govern- 



142 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

ment made up of civilians. There is no lack of 
people of ability. They can be counted by the 
dozen; but they live shut up in their houses, 
avoiding direct contact with politics, or serving 
in positions under the triumphant wielders of 
the machete. You find them wandering about 
abroad, trying often to get a place back home, 
but feeling that their efforts will prove fruit- 
less. 

Force Needed to Protect Civilians 

Let us suppose it were possible without revo- 
lution to work the miracle of constituting a 
government of distinguished peaceful civilians. ^ 
I take it for granted that such a government 
would be elected by constitutional means, for 
if it came into power by revolution, the Gen- 
erals, and not the civilians, would surely con- 
trol it. Once it got into power, to sustain itself 
and do something useful, it would have to de- 
pend for its strength on a national army. The 
first job would be to suppress the old abuses, 
correcting the easy-going manner the officials, 
from the Minister down to the humblest tax 
collector, have in handling public money ; prose- 
cuting thieves and grafters, and eliminating 



CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 143 

oorruption from the administrative bureaus. 
This would create a host of discontented peo- 
ple; and we know what people do in Mexico 
when they are dissatisfied with the Govern- 
ment : they rise against it, and there are always 
people ready to join such an insurrection. 

An army would be needed to protect our Gov- 
ernment of illustrious civilians, and that army 
would have to be commanded by somebody, 
some General or other, a General Martinez, or 
a General Perez. That General would have to 
be somebody different from any General ever 
heard of in Mexico so far; otherwise he would 
surely act as logically as all the famous Gen- 
erals Mexico has had since the time she won 
her independence. 

''I am the man who keeps this Government 
going. It's only fair that I should put these 
pikers out of office and run things myself. Why 
should I let these fellows put anything over 
on me?" 

And the government of honest men, of ' 'fath- 
ers of their country," would be out of business 
within a year. 



144 MEXICO IN EEVOLUTION 

The Strength of 3y[ilitarism 

Militarism is stronger in the Mexico of the 
present than it was in the Germany of William 
II. It is a militarism in plain clothes and frock 
coats, Generals, Colonels and Captains, who go 
about like other people, insisting on your call- 
ing them citizens and wiio remind you that 
before the revolution of 1914 they were simple 
civilians. These men form a caste apart in the 
population. They have their idols, and these 
idols they are anxious to impose upon the coun- 
try as a step to power. 

Many people have hoped that the fall of 
Carranza might mark the beginning of a move- 
ment of regeneration. We shall soon be hear- 
ing high-sounding phrases from this Mexican 
militarism with so much of the literary and 
bombastic in the language it speaks. The vic- 
tors will be talking of ''democracy, which be- 
gins its career from this moment," of ''the 
bright future opening before our country," of 
"the immediate realization of the promises of 
the revolution," and so on. Lies and poppy- 
cock, all such chatter! 

The present revolution may be described as 



CONDITION OF THE OOUNTUY 145 

the uprising of two Generals aspiring to the 
Presidency against an energetic and stubborn 
President bent on imposing his own civilian can- 
didate by violent means. There is nothing else 
to it. If Carranza had desisted from his pur- 
pose of forcing Bonillas on the country there 
would have been no insurrection. Mexico can 
hope for nothing new out of it, nor can those 
who suffer from the perpetual disorder in the 
nation, which really deserves far kinder for- 
tune, justifiably expect any immediate change 
for the better. 

Carranza may have been an evil influence, 
but his conquerors are men of the same school, 
without perhaps his vigor and persistence of 
personality. It is useless to expect anything 
now from men like Obregon and Don Pablo 
Gonzalez. You might as well try to make a new 
suit of clothes out of cloth already rotting and 
moth-eaten. These two men are well-known 
quantities. They will surprise nobody. As for 
Don Pablo, some people laugh at him for his 
insignificance ; others are suspicious of his enig- 
matic good nature. Obregon is an impulsive, 
erratic person, and the people who know him 
best arc not, despite his general popularity, 



146 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

convinced that he was bom to lead a nation. 
That kind of man would be a delicious spec- 
tacle in the Presidency of a republic. The 
thought of him would surely cause a stampede 
of people elsewhere to go and live in Mexico. 

De la Huerta— Will He Succeed? 

The only ''new man" the recent revolution 
has brought into notice is Adolfo de la Huerta, 
Governor of Sonora. I do not know de la 
Huerta personally, but friends of mine who 
are friends of his have talked to me about him. 
He is a cultivated and enthusiastic young man 
of high aspirations, who seems to have kept 
himself free from the blemish of politics of the 
Mexican style. His attitude toward Carranza 
was a noble and courageous one. He was the 
first man to rise in insurrection and take per- 
sonal responsibility therefor, and at first it 
seemed that luck was going against him. 

He has traveled and lived abroad, a valuable 
asset in a country where the rulers generally 
have never crossed the national frontiers. He 
was Consul for some time in New York. Be- 
fore this revolution began his friends knew of 
him only that he was fond of art, especially of 



CONDITION OF THE OOUNTEY 147 

music, and that lie was devoting himself en- 
thusiastically to the cultivation of his voice, a 
rather attractive tenor. 

This young man reminds one of a virgin lost 
in a crowd of rabid and shrewd old hags who 
think they can become young again by rubbing 
against her. Who knows whether this man can 
resist the contamination of his environment? 

''Then there is no way out for Mexico?" my 
reader may ask. 

Yes, there is probably a way out, but I do 
not know what it is. I simply am sure that 
there is one. I am an optimist. In this world 
everything adjusts itself, sometimes well and 
sometimes badly, but eventually things turn out 
all right. Life is stronger than the barbarism 
and stupidity of men. Sometimes the remedy 
is pleasant to the taste, sometimes it is bitter 
as gall ; but in the end things fall into that or- 
derly rhythm without which life is impossible. 



Vn. THE GENERALS 

I MUST begin this chapter with a story. 
In the second decade of the nineteenth 
century, when Ferdinand VII. of Spain de- 
stroyed the constitutional regime and restored 
the absolute monarchy, there was, so people 
say, a very wretched actor playing in a comedy 
theater in Madrid. He was not merely a bad 
actor. His ineptitude surpassed anything that 
the public of the Spanish capital had ever seen. 
When things were getting past the limit of en- 
durance, a plot was hatched to drive him off the 
stage one evening with a fusillade of potatoes. 
But the actor, who in his way was no fool, man- 
aged to get wind of what was in store for him 
and made arrangements to avoid it. 

''Long live the absolute monarchy!" he 
shouted, stepping forward on the stage. ''Down 
with the Liberals!" And the audience in the 
theater fell into abashed silence. Who dared at- 
tack a man with such words on his Hps? Any 
hostile demonstration would have been inter- 
preted as an act of treason to the King. 

148 



THE GENERALS 149 

Defenders of Present Mexican Rule 

A device somewhat similar has been tried 
with me by a number of people who find it to 
their personal interest to support the present 
Government in Mexico. And it will, in the fu- 
ture, be tried by many, very many others, by 
everybody in fact who thinks it will help him 
along in his business to win the gratitude of 
the ruling clique in that country by rushing to 
its defense here. 

' ' He is attacking Latin America, ' ' they shout, 
like the comedian of Madrid. ''He is throw- 
ing mud at people who speak his own language 
and are of his own flesh and blood !" 

Now, in my long career as a writer, I have 
done plenty of things that will protect me, with 
some to spare, from any such childish insults. 
In the last twenty years I have written a great 
deal in defense of the Spanish-American na- 
tions, and I have advertised in many countries 
all that Spanish civilization has done and is 
doing in the New World. 

I have addressed not only audiences that 
speak Spanish. Why persuade people who are 
already convinced? I have spread my ideas in 



150 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

countries of different languages. Many cities 
of the United States have heard lectures of 
mine on Spanish-American culture. I have 
spoken in its defense even in Mexico itself — 
not the pleasantest of tasks by any means ; for 
there, apart from a small minority of excep- 
tional people, the public as a whole, under the 
influence of a defective education, deifies the 
Indian, despite all his cannibalistic and heart- 
eating traditions, endows him with a whole set 
of historic virtues and reviles the Spaniard 
who first planted on the country's soil the 
standard of Christian civilization. 

The "Gunmen Who Exploit Mexico*' 

It is usual for people who feel themselves in 
the wrong and don't know how to get out of 
their mess to confuse issues by distorting their 
antagonist's words. That trick will not work 
with me. I say exactly what I think, and it is 
useless to pretend I have said what I did not 
say and will never say. Latin America (within 
which the Mexican nation chances to be situ- 
ated) is one thing. But the crowd of gunmen 
which is exploiting and dishonoring the poor 
people of Mexico is quite another. 



THE GENERALS 151 

I shall always defend the independence and 
dignity of the nations that partake of my na- 
tive blood, but the mere fact that a gang of 
guerrillas, with a grip on the throat of Mexico, 
happens to use my language to express its col- 
lective egotism and ambition is not sufiQcient to 
win my support. In my works I fought Ger- 
man militarism tooth and nail because I consid- 
ered it a curse on the world. Must I compro- 
mise, then, with Mexican militarism just be- 
cause, as compared with the German, that mili- 
tarism is something grotesque and absurd? 

For the very reason that I am a Spaniard, 
and love Latin America, I feel in honor bound 
to combat that pop-gun terrorism which is dis- 
crediting everybody of Spanish race. If the 
Mexico of Obregon, of Villa, of the rest of them, 
were located at the other end of the American 
continent, in Tierra del Fuego, let us say, we 
could let it fume in peace. The fact is, however, 
that Mexico borders on the United States, the 
most powerful nation in the world at the pres- 
ent moment. Mexico, in its revolutionary 
greed, has involved England, France, and all 
the countries which make up world opinion. 
And the disgrace falls back upon every one of 



152 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

us who, by ties of Spanisli blood, feel associated 
with that unhappy people. 

In a subsequent article on "Mexico and 
Latin America," I shall say something about 
the damage which the abnormal state of affairs 
in Mexico, by reason of the Spanish language 
of that country, does to the prestige of Span- 
iards in general and particularly of the Span- 
ish-speaking States of the Americas. Human- 
ity, as a whole, does not know geography. It 
generalizes dangerously in its judgments of na- 
tions and races. Most people, when they think 
of poor Mexico, with one stupid revolution suc- 
ceeded by a more stupid one, take no trouble to 
distinguish that country from Argentina, Bra- 
zil, Chile, or Uruguay. ''The usual Latin 
American stuff! "What can you expect?" 

Truth Improper for Export 

There is only one way to remove such false 
impressions, and that is to tell the truth. Yes, 
the truth ! But Truth is the last lady on earth 
that some people care to be introduced to. A 
few days ago I met a Mexican who furnished 
me with some of the data I used in my articles. 
I was not writing a novel. All those stories, all 



TME GENERALS 153 

that gossip, all that talk about graft and rob- 
bery, I got either in Mexico or from Mexicans. 
" It 's a shame ! " he said to me. * ' Those articles 
of yonrs are a disaster for Mexico!" ''Wait a 
minute!" I said. ''For Mexico, or for the peo- 
ple who are bossing and robbing Mexico? If 
the latter, I tell you frankly, I'm tickled to 
death. I wanted to get those fellows! How- 
ever, that's not the point. Was I, or was I not, 
telling the truth?" 

I could see by the expression on his face that 
he was going to say it was not all true. But he 
remembered then that a number of the items 
had come from no one but himself, "It was 
the truth," he answered with conviction. "But 
there are truths and truths. The truth we can 
tell to our friends. But do you have to go 
shouting it from the housetops?" And he 
added, after a moment's reflection, as though 
something brilliant had occurred to him : ' ' You 
might have kept those articles for Spain. We 
don't mind what people think over there. But 
publish them in the United States ... Of all 
places ... !" 

The reader will get the point. The truth about 
actual conditions in Mexico is not considered 



154 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

down there as proper goods for export to the 
United States. As for the opposite of the truth 
— export all you want, and no questions asked! 
But any one who describes things as they are 
is an enemy of Mexico! 

A Militarism Based on Disorder 

Perhaps I should not stress the comparison 
between German militarism and the militarism 
of Mexican brand. German militarism seems 
to have gone forever; but that of Mexico is in 
the flush of youth, and it has a long and busy 
life ahead of it. 

German militarism was based on tradition, 
on hierarchy, on order, and besides, it origin- 
ated in the victories of 1871 and in the conquests 
of territory those victories resulted in. Mexican 
militarism is based on disorder, on the sudden 
attack boldly conceived, on the insurrection con- 
sidered as a means of advancement. In its 
whole history, Mexican militarism shows only 
a series of civil wars, resulting in execution 
for private citizens, plundering for towns, de- 
struction for the National Railways. We have 
yet to see what it could show, in the way of in- 



THE GENERALS 155 

telligence and professional skill, if it had. to 
deal with an attack from abroad. 

The German Generals set np an Emperor 
who was Emperor once for all, and passed the 
office on to his sons. The Mexican Generals 
set np a republican Emperor, from time to time, 
in accord with their own desires and ambitions. 
Yesterday it was Carranza, ''Our First Chief,'* 
"Our Beloved Leader" — ^but for the moment, 
and all rights reserved to kick him out and 
*' suicide" him, if necessary! To-day it is 
Obregon, hail-fellow-well-met, the chief with a 
smile and a slap on the back for everybody! 
And to-morrow, somebody else, any one at all^ 
provided he promises to give what his prede- 
cessor failed to give, because there are not 
enough easy berths in the Mexican Government 
to accommodate all who would like to fill one. 

Everybody's Generals 

In former times there were, in Mexico, only 
such Generals as belonged to the regular army, 
soldiers by profession, hke the professional 
soldiers of every other country. Now there 
are Generals and Generals! There are Gener- 
als appointed by Carranza. There are Gener- 



156 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

als created by Villa. There are Generals manii- 
factured by Felix Diaz. There are Generals 
counterfeited by Zapata. Who is not a General 
down there? During my visit in Mexico City, 
whenever I was introduced to a simple Colonel, 
I rubbed my eyes for a second look, and al- 
most with pity for the poor fellow. ''What's 
wrong with this man?" I thought. **He's not 
even a Brigadier." I 

Another point of difference between militar- 
ism in Europe and that of Mexico ! In the old 
world, the General carries a sword and swears 
by it. The Mexican General in the make-up 
supplied by the revolution, does not know what 
a sword is. He never wore one. He carries a 
revolver in his belt, and I can imagine him 
swearing a theatrical oath: "By my six- 
shooter!" 'i 

Whether Generals or Colonels, they are all 
boys, scarcely of voting age, boys scandalously 
immature and still infected, for the most part, 
with the belhcose aggressiveness and perver- 
sity of the youngster in the preparatory school. 
Most of them held small jobs under the Gov- 
ernment of Porfirio Diaz ; or else they were or- 
dinary laborers, or even idlers, ne 'er-do-weUs, 



THE GENERALS 157 

who enlisted under the revolutionary banner 
and managed to win the little gold eagle which 
is the symbol of their present grade. 

The Thrill of Catchwords 

The highest original social rank that I found 
represented among the Generals was that of 
university student. Scattered among the few 
officers of urban origin there are Generals who 
were formerly rancheros, or cowboys from 
the cattle ranches. These illiterate rustics lis- 
ten to their city-bred comrades with wide open 
mouths, and kindle at every mention of the 
words "liberty," "democracy," "redistribu- 
tion of property," and so on — phrases they do 
not understand at all, but which send thrills of 
sacred consecration up and down their backs 
whenever they hear them. 

All these Generals boast of their humble ori- 
gin, and go out of their way to refer to it as 
a title to distinction. Some of them are "So- 
cialist Generals," while others claim even to 
be Bolshevists. However, their "comrades" of 
the rank and file must be careful not to carry 
the principles of brotherly love into matters of 
discipline. The "Citizen General" is quite 



158 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

capable of ordering a hundred executions or so 
just to ''keep order." The Generals, as a rule, 
hate uniforms. Many of them never owned 
one. They pin the gold eagle to a coat lapel 
or to their enormous felt hat, and they are 
ready for dress parade. 

Their Wonderful Revolvers 

The General's outfit has one other distinc- 
tive mark — the revolver. I remember that, as 
a boy, I used to notice how Generals in Spain, 
France and other European countries, when 
thsy were in citizen clothes, wore red sashes 
under their waistcoats. This was an indication 
of rank; and when they wished to be recog- 
nized they simply lifted the flaps of their vests. 
The Mexican General also has a sash, but a 
sash of tanned leather, a "Sam Brown" affair, 
stuffed with fifty cartridges or more, and a re- 
volver usually worn in back. When, as you 
walk down a Mexican street, you meet a gen- 
tleman with the lower part of his vest unbut- 
toned, just enough to show the belt and the car- 
tridges, you cannot be mistaken. He is a Gen- 
eral, or at least a Colonel, ''of the revolution." 
He is taking his pistol out for a constitutional. 



THE GENEBALS 1§9 

And what guns they wear ! If yon have never 
seen the revolvers of the Mexican War Lords, 
your education is still incomplete. The wildest 
dreams of the most delirious German fire-eater 
who ever lived are surpassed by realities in 
Mexico. There are machine-gun pistols. There 
are pistols with folding stocks that can be in- 
stantaneously transformed into rifles. There 
are large-bore pistols made for firing explosive 
bullets. I left the country without getting to 
see the famous ''papa and mamma" pistols. 
But I was assured by people whom I trust that 
there are pistols in Mexico which when they are 
discharged say "papa" and "mamma," like 
the mechanical dolls of the toy shops. Some 
of them even play a piece of music. 

The Dueling Type 

At times you meet a short, hollow-chested, 
neurotic-looking fellow — fine points, these in a 
regular soldier. You Avonder whether that is 
a man or what in the world it is. There is no 
doubt in this case either. This time it is a 
pistol taking a General out to walk. Then 
again you are sitting in a train and suddenly 
you start with surprise. A General has just 



160 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

vanislied through a little door marked ' ' Gentle- 
men," but before hurrying away he has taken 
off his belt and parked his artillery on the seat 
beside you. 

The arguments that spring up at all hours 
of day and night between these armed men are 
a source of danger not only to themselves but 
to the public. At best one General kills an- 
other at high noon in some candy store on the 
principal street of the city, and nobody arrests 
him. Then again two Generals will open fire 
in the middle of a public park, and the cannon- 
ade does not stop until all their ammunition 
has been exhausted. A matter of thirty or 
forty minutes, perhaps, and no casualties^ — 
unless perhaps some passerby, not knowing 
that two Generals are scowling at each other 
in that particular place, runs into a bullet be- 
fore he can get away. 

But Everybody Totes a Gun 

To be fair to the Generals, I must add that 
they are not the only people in Mexico who 
carry guns. Revolvers are as indispensable as 
neckties to a gentleman's wardrobe. Mexico 
City since the revolution began has lived the 



THE GENERALS 161 

life of a dime novel. The ''movie" men do 
not have to rack their brains for subjects. They 
read the papers ; murders, assassinations, high- 
way robberies, kidnapings, bands of masked 
men ! The capital, no less, was the home of the 
famous "Band of the Gray Car." The Mex- 
ican public has always supposed that gang to 
have been in the employ of Generals. People 
are even more specific. They allege that its 
leader was one of the present candidates for 
the Presidency of the republic. 

The only difference between General and 
civilian, in the matter of revolvers, is that the 
Generals wear their guns in full view while 
ordinary people keep them half concealed. The 
revolver is used for all sorts of purposes. 
Whenever I was at a picnic in the country and 
a bottle had to be opened, some friend was sure 
suddenly to produce a pistol. ''It's so much 
simpler, you see." And civilian or soldier, as 
he might chance to be, he would hammer away 
at the metal top of the bottle until it came off. 
And the weapon was loaded aU the time. 



162 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

Explosive Under Trappings 

Mexico is a blessed country ! There is some- 
thing affable, vehement even, about its cour- 
tesy. When a friend shakes hands with you 
he throws one arm over your shoulder. And I 
adopted the manner myself. But when I got my 
arm over the shoulder of an acquaintance I 
used, out of curiosity, to let my hand fall gradu- 
ally downward toward his belt. It never got 
quite that far. In the neighborhood of the 
man's waist I would always encounter a sort 
of metallic framework. It was the revolver and 
its sheath, along with a whole magazine of car- 
tridges. The Mexican revolver is intended for 
the long-drawn-out battle. It required a lav- 
ish supply of munitions. 

For the life of me I could never find out 
whether the Dean of the university also carried 
a gun. The sly fox always avoided my em- 
brace and his studious precautions against any 
such contingency left me convinced that my 
suspicions of him were well founded. ''Oh, my 
dear So-and-so, so glad to see you!" And I 
went around embracing them all one after the 
other and they all had the inevitable revolver. 



THE GENERALS 163 

When I say all, I mean all — ^Ministers, Under 
Secretaries, Journalists, Deputies and Sena- 
tors, and these latter with good reason, because 
debates in Congress often end with an exchange 
of a bullet or two outside the chambers. 

Carranza Wore One, Too 

Even Carranza, as President of the republic, 
used to carry, under his severe ceremonial frock 
coat, a horse-pistol with an extra large supply 
of munitions. Poor Don Venustiano! He 
knew his times and his people only too well! 
He felt himself surrounded by experts in dar 
la vuelta, by people only too ready to bite the 
hand that was feeding them. He was sure that, 
sooner or later, he would have to defend his 
own life. What, probably, he never foresaw 
was that the men trusted to guard him would 
rouse him one night with cries of ''Viva Obre- 
gon!", empty their guns into him point blank, 
and then assert that he had died a suicide ! Car- 
ranza a suicide! Carranza, the most stubborn 
man in the world, the ''mule in the President's 
parlor," as his enemies used to say! For any 
one who knew Carranza, that suicide story is 



164 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

the most brazen, the most impudent, calunmy 
that could ever have been cooked up. 

This gang of country louts and roisterers, 
who call themselves Generals and are running 
the country for what there is in it, are for the 
moment worshipers of Obregon. Obregon is 
one of them. I might call him, even, the Mex- 
ican General par excellence; and his followers 
adore him because in him they see their own 
image triumphant. They all pretend to be in- 
sulted if you accuse them of militarism. Mili- 
tarists? Not they! They are "revolution- 
aries!" They are, and they are going to re- 
main, simple ''citizens"! 

The Revolutionary Caste 

Nevertheless, they form a caste apart from 
the rest of the nation. They support and pro- 
tect one another; and now again to get one of 
their number in power, they have gone back 
to the barracks, or to the mountains, to incite 
existing troops to mutiny, or to raise new 
forces, and produce a revolution that is Revolu- 
tion No. 64 in the course of a single century! 

Despite all his defects Carranza, during the 
last months of his life, had a sound conception 



THE GENERALS 165 

of what his country needed. He wanted to cre- 
ate a government of civilians; he wanted to 
hand the Presidency over to a man who had 
never been in the army. He was determined to 
have done with Generals and militarism once 
and for all. As the leader of a long revolntion- 
ary war he knew better than any one else what 
Mexican militarism means for that country. 
But he chose a bad candidate and was over- 
confident of his own strength. He forgot that 
treason is a fundamental in Mexican national 
politics, and the reward for his noble endeavor 
has been defeat and assassination! 

At this moment militarism is in higher as- 
cendancy in Mexico than ever before. The 
civilian Provisional President, Adolfo de la 
Huerta, well meaning and estimable youth that 
he is, represents only an interlude in Mexican 
affairs. Should he try to im.pose his own ideas 
upon the course of events he would fall over 
night. Militarism is in command in Mexico, 
and militarism means Obregon. 

Obregon's Chances 

"How about the rest of the country?" some 
one may ask. 



166 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

The rest of the country for yea/rs past has 
not figured in political intrigue, and it has no 
desire to figure there. The floor is held now 
by those who have succeeded in the recent insur- 
rection, by militarists or by civilians standing 
with the militarists in the hope of getting some 
berth which only a civilian can fill. 

It will be useless for Obregon to talk of "free 
speech." If he were a newcomer in Mexican 
life, a few fools might believe him. But Obre- 
gon is only too well known. Nobody has for- 
gotten the victims he once ordered his sub- 
ordinates to shoot, nor the storekeepers he set 
to sweeping the streets, nor the respectable 
prisoners he herded in cattle cars. Obregon is 
a Proconsul of the Eoman decadence, when au- 
thorities used to write jokes and puns around 
their signatures to death warrants. Nobody 
in Mexico is going to do any talking. The 
closed mouth is the symbol of prudence there. 

''But will Obregon hold the support of the 
militarists?" 

No! 

It is the part of logic to say ''No.'* Car- 
ranza had far greater prestige than Obregon 
will ever have. He was "Leader" and "First 



THE GENERALS 167 

Chief" in reality! He could not find enough 
plums to go around! And he was murdered! 

The moment Obregon is unable to make good 
on all the promises he has made, and to satisfy 
all the ambitions he has aroused, the moment 
his offices are all filled and many of his present 
friends are left out, the disappointed people 
will unite with other disappointed people, the 
cry of "Death to Obregon! Viva Tom or Dick 
or Harry!" will be raised — and Mexico will 
have one revolution more. As I shall show in 
another article on "The Mexican Army," the 
elements for such a new revolution will not be 
lacking. 

"But what is your idea, then," several 
friends of mine have asked, "in attacking Mex- 
ican militarism with such harsh revelations?" 

The answer is easy. I want to contribute all 
I can toward the destruction of that militarism, 
which is the principal cause of the backward- 
ness and anarchical state of affairs in which 
Mexico is living. So long as that country does 
not suppress its Generals, who are everlasting- 
ly bent on tyrannizing over it, so long as it is 
not ruled by pacific citizens able to think in 
modem terms, Mexico will remain a sad ex- 



168 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

ceptiou, an object of loatlamg and disgust, 
among all civilized peoples. The well-to-do 
classes of Mexico have fled the country and are 
wanderers on the face of the earth. The mid- 
dle and professional classes have continued 
living at home, but under deplorable conditions, 
and either not daring to speak at all, or saying 
what they really think in as low a voice as 
possible. What else can they do, if militarism 
is in the saddle? Where can they find protec- 
tion, if the strongest portion of the people, kept 
in ignorance, formerly by the priests and now 
by Generals calling themselves liberators, fol- 
low the military men blindly on receipt of 
a rifle and on a promise of $2 a day, and a free 
hand? 

I have with me a number of letters from 
Mexicans, written to me before I w^ent to Mex- 
ico and after I got there. They read like the 
lamentations of slaves, denouncing the crimes 
of their oppressors and doubting whether there 
will ever be justice in that country. Many of 
the letters contain insults addressed to me, and 
I shall keep them because of those insults, be- 
cause of their delightful injustice. "V\nien I was 
noticed at the capital in the company of men 



THE GENERALS 169 

in the Government my correspondents thought 
I had ''sold out to the oppressors of the real 
Mexico." They imagined I was going to raise 
a paean of eulogy in honor of Carranza and the 
militarism which was doing so much wrong to 
the nation and was finally to turn against its 
chief. They were looking for an avenger to 
denounce their oppressors, and they foresaw in 
me one more defender of tyranny. 

I imagine that by this time they have realized 
their mistake. I had to frequent the circles of 
those in power to see things in their true light. 
Now I have seen what I wanted to see, and I 
go on with my work. 

Wanted, an Aroused Public Opinion 

"And what is that work?" you ask. 

Simply to tell the truth to the damage of 
triumphant militarism! And if I should suc- 
ceed in the task it would be a great day for 
Mexico! A writer, to be sure, is a small man 
for such a big job. But just as I have spoken 
here in the United States I shall go on speak- 
ing in Europe and everywhere else. And who 
knows ? Oerman militarism was a far stronger 
and a far less ridiculous thing. But no slight 



170 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

influence on ils ultimate destruction came from 
the uprising of public opinion against it 
throughout the world. I shall work to create 
such a public opinion, to isolate the militarism 
in Mexico, to deprive it of all mistaken support 
abroad. Then we shall see whether it grows 
stronger or weaker ; whether finally it does not 
die without a friend in the world ; whether the 
peace-loving and intelligent classes of people 
in Mexico must go on living in oppression and 
humiliation as slaves to the first machetero 
that comes along; whether they are not able to 
govern themselves as people do in other mod- 
ern countries ! 

And in this idea I shall go on with my work 
unless the Mexican militarists take it into their 
heads to ^ ' suicide ' ' me, as they did Carranza. 



Vm. THE MEXICAN AEMY 

EXICO once had a regular army that was 
well organized and quite comparable to 
the military establishments of other countries. 
This army was demoralized, first, by the revolu- 
tion of Madero. During the long civil struggle 
led by Carranza it fell to pieces completely. 
The so-called Federal Army was then abolished 
as a dangerous institution created by Porfirio 
Diaz. Even the officers' training schools, the 
military academies, were closed. Anybody who 
had ever held a commission as a Federal officer 
was regarded with suspicion by the triumphant 
revolutionaries. 

The ''army" now rampant in Mexico is made 
up of the old revolutionary bands, gradually 
whipped into the outward appearance of regi- 
ments and led by former guerrilleros newly 
baptized as Colonels. When such regiments 
are stationed in Mexico City or one of the large 
towns they are equipped, after a fashion, with 
uniforms, though the privates never quite suo- 

171 



172 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

ceed in all looking alike. On holidays the offi- 
cers make a more dazzling display of scarfs 
and gold lace than any other soldiers on earth, 
and this bellicose splendor is often in grotesque 
contrast with the oily skins and unkempt beards 
that it adorns. 

But in the outlying districts the soldier is an 
ordinary peasant, with that enormous Mexican 
sombrero which everybody knows, two wedlr 
filled cartridge belts stretching bandoleer- 
fashion from shoulders to waist and crossing 
at the breast, and, finally, a rifle. Bayonets are 
not used in the Mexican Army. The city bat- 
talions sometimes carry them to piece out their 
''uniform," but the soldiers do not know what 
they are for. They are, in fact, of little sig- 
nificance in Mexican warfare, a matter of long- 
winded fusillades at limit range, the outcome 
of which each General can interpret to his par- 
ticular taste, reporting grand strategic concep- 
tions or happy tactical maneuvers a la Na- 
poleon, as he sees fit. The General with the 
most cartridges and the greatest endurance in 
firing them is the one who gets away with the 
victory. 

Obregon against Villa was a Joff re or a Foch 



THE MEXICAN AHMY 173 

so long as he had his back to the port of Vera 
Cruz. Cartridges came in there every day 
from the United States, for the American Gov- 
ernment was backing Carranza, ungrateful and 
unappreciative though the First Chief proved 
to be. Villa, on the other hand, without any 
support across the border, received no fire- 
works at all. Eventually he had to decamp, 
''routed" by the great one-armed strategist of 
Celaya. 

An Army of Both Sexes 

The Mexican Army is composed of men and 
women. 

No one has ever decided conclusively which 
of the sexes makes the better soldiers. 

The Mexican takes his wife everywhere. He 
is a sentimental chap, readily susceptible to 
feminine charms and quite likely to be unfaith- 
ful to the woman he has sworn to love and 
cherish. But he cherishes her all the same. 
His spouse goes with him into sorrow and joy. 
She shares his comfort and his hardship. 

When you are traveling on a Mexican rail- 
road you can give odds that more or less con- 
cealed somewhere on the train are the wives of 



174 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

the engineer, the fireman, the brakeman and 
the conductor. If you feel inclined to prove it, 
just start a row with one of the trainmen. You 
wiU at once have a hysterical woman on your 
hands, shrieking at the top of her voice and 
defending her ''man" literally with tooth and 
nail. If an accident ever happens to one of the 
crew the most heartrending scenes result in- 
evitably. A Mexican refuses to go anjrwhere 
without his "old woman." This epithet is a 
term of endearment. The "old woman" may 
be twenty years old. 

It is the same with the army. 

To count the women you count the soldiers. 
Every one of them has a wife, following the 
regiment everywhere. Most often, also, he has 
a number of children along. 

In peace times in the capital you may see a 
detachment with shouldered rifles on the way 
to relieve giiard or on an expedition into the 
country. Just imagi"ne ! Alongside the column 
and keeping step with the men marches a line 
of copper-colored women, wrapped in black 
shawls. They are lean and wan, as though the 
turmoil of that life, without rest or quiet, kept 
all the flesh stripped from their bones. Each 



THE MEXICAN ARMY 175 

woman carries a basket on one arm. Trotting 
along at her side are a number of barefoot 
youngsters. Some of the little fellows are 
naked. They keep smiling at their daddies, 
but with a respectful eye out for the officer, a 
sort of much-feared god, who is always shooing 
them away when they run up to take their 
father by the hand. 

The "Soldierettes" 

Around the barracks at certain hours of the 
day the doorways and sidewalks are crowded 
with women, sitting elbow to elbow there in 
correct military alignment. With their black 
shawls over light-colored dresses they remind 
you of so many penguins lined up on the edge 
of some cliff on the glacial oceans. Each of 
these women — they are dubbed *' soldierettes" 
by people of wit — ^has a basket at her feet. She 
has brought her ''man's" dinner. 

Eight there in the middle of the street, or it 
may be in a railroad station or out in the open 
fields, the soldier sits down on the ground with 
his wife and children round him. And he eats 
his meal with majestic deliberation and slow- 
ness. The women are usually dirty, and often 



176 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

they are in rags and tatters. The miserable 
life they lead does not lend itself to personal 
refinements. But the delicacy, the neatness and 
even the primitive taste with which they pre- 
pare these meals is something astonishing. 
The basket contains, besides food, a large nap- 
kin or tablecloth, so to speak. It has a colored 
border, with wide fringes, so that the woman 
can stretch it tight on the ground. The plates 
and deep dishes are in earthenware, with 
painted frets, suggesting the pottery of the 
Aztecs. 

After the soldier has eaten he gets up, 
tightens his belt and takes his gun. The little 
ones wipe their mouths and noses with their 
knuckles and devotedly kiss their daddy's hand. 
He pats them on the head in benediction. 
"Grod keep you!" is his stock phrase of fare- 
well in revolutionary times, ''and here's hop- 
ing they don't kill your papa!" The young- 
sters do not understand, but the lean, copper- 
colored woman standing there in her black 
shawl lowers her head in fatalistic resigna- 
tion. Death! It is so easy to die in a country 
of revolutions! That was what her other 
"man" said as he went away never to come 



THE MEXICAN ARMY 177 

back. That was the way also witli the "man" 
before that one. 

Faithful Unto Death— Only 

For the ' * soldierette " or "hard-tack," as 
she is also called (the actual word is gal- 
leta), is faithful beyond reproach to her 
"man"; but she goes to another without the 
slightest hesitation the moment her "husband" 
is killed or throws her over. What good is a 
" soldier ette" without a soldier? Neither pas- 
sion nor beauty figure in these unions. The 
quality the Mexican soldier most values in his 
"old woman" is her skill in finding something 
to eat and in spreading the meal on the ground, 
her ability to "stand up" under hard work. 
When a soldier falls he wills his woman to 
some more fortunate comrade in arms. Since 
the Mexican Army takes men of all ages, fifteen- 
year-old boys may be seen living with "hard- 
tacks ' ' old enough to be their mothers or their 
grandmothers. And there are wrinkled old 
men, with white stubble on their chins, who get 
their meals from girls in their teens, whom 
they have inherited from soldiers killed in some 
previous skirmish. 



178 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

It is during actual fighting in the field that 
the ' ' soldierette ' ' gives proof of all her powers 
of endurance and self-sacrifice. Many Mexican 
Generals have thought of abolishing her, but 
in the end they have had to compromise with 
her and finally to seek her support. What else 
can be done in an army destitute of a supply 
and sanitary corps ? The sick and the wounded 
cannot be abandoned to chance. The ' ' soldier- 
ette" makes up for more than one deficiency in 
the Mexican military system. 

Not only does she look after the soldier. 
Sometimes her attention is needed by the chief. 

*'Have you a bite to spare?" the Captain 
asks one of his men during a halt on march. 
The oflScer, not provided as a rule with ''hard- 
tack," is much worse off than the private. 
''No, Captain, but the Indian will be back soon 
and she'll be sure to have something." The 
"Indian" is another pet name used by the sol- 
diers when they get tired of the "old woman." 

Foragers of Sorts 

When the troops are on the march the "sol- 
dierettes ' ' form the advance guard. They keep 
several miles ahead, so that when the men 



THE MEXICAN ARMY 179 

arrive the fires will be burning and the meal 
ready. The towns and villages are more afraid 
of the women than of the soldiers themselves, 
though the latter have only the vaguest notions 
of property rights and the value of human life. 
The "soldierette" will march for whole days 
with a brat clinging to either hand, another in- 
visible one awaiting its call into the world, a 
pack of clothes and bedding on her head, and 
often, to top off the outfit, a parrot. 

With so much impedimenta you would think 
that woman had trouble enough. In point of 
fact, she passes over the country like a scourge 
of God. Along her path not a tree remains 
with a piece of fruit, not a garden with a tur- 
nip, not a coop with a chicken, not a barnyard 
with a pig. She sweeps everything before her, 
and the landscape behind has the parched, bar- 
ren aspect of the desert. It is as though a 
plague of locusts had settled on the land. That 
woman can pick up a good meal in sterile places 
where any ordinary human being would starve. 
A village may have been sacked seven times in 
one week. Give her the chance for an eighth 
time over and she will turn you out a regular 
Sunday dinner. 



180 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Sometimes as they march, long distances 
ahead of their husbands the ''soldierettes" of 
one regiment will meet the ''hard-tacks" of 
another troop which is advancing to give battle. 
If both bodies of women are not specially hun- 
gry, if some previous pillage has satisfied all 
immediate needs, the passions of patriotism 
and politics find occasion to express themselves 
in noble animosity. The women and children 
throw sticks, stones and epithets at each other 
till the males come up and start the real show. 

More often, however, both crowds of "sol- 
dierettes" are short on provisions of one kind 
or another. Then they get together on friendly 
terms. "People have got to live. Why should 
civilians have to scratch each other's eyes 
out?" And the ones who have food share it 
with those who have only money. But Mexican 
money is often worthless. They much prefer 
to sell supplies for cartridges. The "men" of 
the " soldierettes " are running low on ammuni- 
tion. The Government troops, on the contrary, 
have just received a fresh and lavish supply. 
The Federal "soldierette" will walk back sev- 
eral miles looking for her "man." 



THE MEXICAN ARMY 181 

"They won't take money," she reports. 
"They say you get nothing to eat unless you 
can pay in cartridges." Her "man" expresses 
no particular interest in the matter. He has 
been in the same tix himself. "Well, here you 
are, then!" And he passes over a handful of 
.44s, one of which may kill him two hours later 
in the day. The one thing certain is the dinner. 
Death, at the worst, is only a possibility! 

The Mexican's indifference to death is not 
courage really. Courage is that positive com- 
pulsion the man in commodious circumstances 
feels when, voluntarily and fearlessly, he goes 
out to meet self-sacrifice and danger. The 
Mexican has, rather, a mere contempt for life. 
It is fatalism, absence of fear, more exactly. 
Death, no matter in how terrible a form, will 
not prove much worse than life as he is living 
it ! That is the feeling. 

Songs of the Army 

Mexico is peopled by music lovers and its 
inhabitants turn to poetry and song by instinct. 
The most respected men in any regiment are 
the ones who can play a guitar well and sing a 
song for the bedtime hour. The musician's 



182 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

comrades look after him and vie with one an- 
other in doing him favors. They keep him 
away from the firing line, and their first 
thought as a battle begins is to see that the 
guitar is in a safe place. ** What would happen 
if we lost our music?" 

Another curiosity! With the exception of an 
air sung by Villa's men called ''The Cook- 
roach" (La Cucaracha), all the songs of the 
revolution are named after women. There are 
"La Adelita" and "La Valentina," for in- 
stance. The "Valentina" is the "Marseillaise" 
of the present-day Mexico. When you hear 
that song around a Mexican camp, look out! 
A revolution is about to break out. And yet 
its lines are not so bloodthirsty after all. It is 
the lament of a wandering drunkard address- 
ing himself to a girl named Valentina! The 
last stanza, however, is alone sufficient to justify 
the immense popularity of the song: 

Valentina, Valentina, 
Eendido estoy a tus pies. 

Si me han de matar mahana, 
Que me maten de una vez. 



THE MEXICAN ARMY 183 

**Valeiitma, Valentina, dead-druiik: I lie at 
your feet. If they are going to kill me to-mor- 
row, they might as well kill me now." 

The whole psychology of the Mexican people, 
its fatalistic resignation, its contempt for 
death, its acceptance of the misery in which it 
is living, its inability to buck up and rise, is 
worked into those last two lines. That is why 
the song is loved so much. It expresses a na- 
tional philosophy. '*If I have to die to-mor- 
row, I might as well die now. ' ' 

Revolutionaries by Necessity 

There is no fear that any Mexican revolution 
will prove a fizzle for lack of men. It might 
fail for lack of arms, for lack of cash, for lack 
of understanding between its leaders. But men 
it will always find in abundance. 

The moment it is whispered around that a 
revolution may break out peons begin to get 
scarce around the plantations. Any number of 
them prefer to risk hunger and thirst in the 
desert, provided there is the chance of getting 
into a town once in a while with a rifle and a 
free hand ! 

Then there is the great mass of indifferent,, 



184 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

resigned people who fear not even death. Here 
we find a great majority of the Mexican popu- 
lation, which never start a revolution, but are 
simply forced into it. **I was living on my 
farm and bothering nobody,'' says an old 
fighter. ''First they took my cow; then they 
took my horse. Finally I said to them: 'Well, 
if you are going to take everything, give me a 
rifle and I will go with you.' And my old 
woman felt the same way about it. After all, 
what else was there to do?" And so the civil 
war got one more soldier and one more 
" soldierette. " 

The ignorance, the mental apathy, the irre- 
sponsibility of these men, is something astound- 
ing. They fight each other and they kill each 
other without the slightest idea of why they are 
doing it. Meanwhile the newspapers in the pay 
of the Generals write pompously of the "enthu- 
siastic troops of the revolution" and "the 
sacred principles for which they are offering 
their lives. ' ' 

There was a moment during the second 
period of the great revolution when Villa was 
fighting on one side, Carranza on another and 
the government emanating from the Pact of 



THE MEXICAN ARMY 185 

Aguas-Calientes on still a third. Some of the 
troops got mixed up as to whom they were 
fighting for, and they were not sure which 
viva to shout as they began their battle. The 
point was this: If they cried "viva the wrong 
person" — and the political situation kept 
changing from hour to hour — they might get a 
volley from the troops beside or behind them. 

"Say, who the devil are we for?" one soldier 
asked of the man next to him as they fired their 
first shots. 

"How should I know?" was the answer. 
"Better ask the Captain." 

"And I wasn't sure myself," said that officer 
to me, as he told me the story in Mexico a few 
weeks ago. 

Recndting, Mexican Style 

When a man fails to join ad insurrection out 
of fondness for firearms or out of fatalistic in- 
difference, there are indirect ways of persuad- 
ing him to become a soldier. 

I know a Mexican General who enjoys a great 
reputation among his admirers for his skill in 
raising troops. "He takes to the mountains," 
they told me, "with one attendant and a few 



186 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

rifles. He turns up at the end of the month 
with 500 men. Give him two months and he 
will have 5,000, and so on till he gets his army." 

One evening when I was dining with the Gen- 
eral in question he confided some of his trad© 
secrets as an organizer to me. I remember one 
of his feats in particular. He had come to a 
mining district to raise some troops. It was a 
busy place, with everybody working, and wages 
were good. Nobody wanted to be a soldier. 
So, on the pretext that the operators were 
"enemies of the common people," the General 
had the entrances to the mines blown up. He 
enlisted 300 men the following day and a thou- 
sand before the end of the week. He told the 
story, moreover, with a show of real pride. 

At times these improvised soldiers exhibit a 
heart-winning ingenuousness. One of them 
during a battle was crouching with one knee on 
the ground and firing away into the air with 
the conscientious regularity of an honest fac- 
tory hand kicking a footpress. He started with 
a hundred cartridges. Every now and then he 
would look at his bandoleers. * ' That 's forty ! ' ' 
"Now that^s fifty-five!" When they were all 
gone he got up and started for the rear. Meet- 



THE MEXICAN ARMY 187 

ing his Captain, he said: *'Here, boss, here's 
your gun!" The Captain looked at him, but 
did not understand. ' ' My job 's done. I burned 
the whole hundred of them. Give the next 
batch to somebody else. Equality, you under- 
stand, boss! That's what revolution means." 
And he was off to look up the ''old woman." 

Such a concept of war is, of course, a ridicu- 
lous one, and it is only fair to add that the 
Mexican soldier kills and dies with absolute 
indifference. The " soldierettes, " poor beasts 
of burden that they are, or incubators for sol- 
diers and " soldierettes " of future revolutions, 
also develop heroic courage under certain cir- 
cumstances. They care as best they can for the 
wounded falling on the field, aiid when their 
"man" is killed they take up his gun and carry 
on the fusillade. They have been known to 
work strategems in battle worthy of the hero- 
ines of antiquity. 

Once in an action, where the regiment of men 
was advancing along a road, I was told that 
the " soldierettes " and all their children 
marched along a parallel road. As the women 
proceeded they began to brush the sun-parched 
trail with branches they had cut from the trees. 



188 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

A great cloud of dust arose, and the opposing 
General was completely deceived. ' ' They have 
cavalry, . . . probably artillery!" And h© or- 
dered a retreat. 

"Generalettes" for Generals 

The Generals of the revolution feel that same 
hankering for home life which makes the pri- 
vate insist on his ''hard-tack." The "Gen- 
eralette " is as necessary to while away the dull 
hours of bivouac as the ''soldierette," and she 
rides with her husband on his campaigns. 

That is the way with Mexicans. I hope that 
in my novel, ''The Eagle and the Snake," I 
shall have room to analyze more thoroughly the 
many contradictions in Mexican psychology. 
A Mexican can be at one and the same time 
both sentimental and cruel. He will burst into 
tears at a sad story, and he will order out a 
firing squad for an execution ; he is passionately 
devoted to home and family, but he is never 
satisfied unless he is tramping over mountains 
and deserts in support of an insurrection. 
Tradition also figures large in the minds of 
country people, especially, in Mexico. 

Villa is a perfect specimen of this latter type. 



THS MEXIOAIT ARMY 189 

Villa does not smoke. Villa does not drink. 
His only weakness is women, and the presence 
of a woman is enough to upset him completely. 
At the sight of one his massive lower jaw, but- 
tressing that well-known Villa face, has been 
known to drop, while a trace of foam began to 
appear at his lips. One might suppose such a 
man capable of carrying off a lady by main 
force. Worse things than that figure in Villa's 
biography. But, as a matter of fact, ViTTa is a 
man of principle. 

*' Things have to be done proper like," says 
he, "the way God and Holy Mother Church 
commands. ' ' 

And when he finds a woman to his liking he 
marries her with all the established rites and 
the greatest possible solemnity. 

Once he promoted an Indian curate, a rela- 
tive of his, to be Bishop to celebrate in suitable 
dignity, miter and all, his marriage to a Mexi- 
can stenographer. The employee in charge of 
the Government marriage register brought his 
book to the ceremony, and Villa, who can write 
nothing but his name, affixed his signature to 
the matrimonial record. Then he went off with 
his bride to the Pullman oar in which he used to 



190 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

live all the time, muoli as the old-fashioned ban- 
dit chiefs used to live in their dog tents. The 
next day, when Villa woke np in the morning, 
the first thing he thought of was to send for the 
marriage license man and his book. That poor 
devil obeyed the summons, trembling like a 
leaf, and sure that his time had come. 

*'You have that book, eh? . . . "Well, . . . 
show me the page!" 

The record in question was pointed out to 
him and the text explained. At last he was con- 
vinced, because he recognized his own signa- 
ture. And he calmly tore out the leaf, folded it 
up and put it in his purse. 

At last his conscience was clear! 

He was a man of morals, with respect for es- 
tablished institutions. He was faithful to his 
first wife, his real wife, and he intended to re- 
main so. He was not going to leave any docu- 
ments around that some day might cause a 
scandal. 



IX. MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 

THE Mexican capital is a city of gloom. 
In daytime, under a dazzling sun and a 
sky of deep blue, it has movement and anima- 
tion. Besides, pretty women, with great deep 
eyes and golden complexions, are going about 
the streets. But when the night shuts down 
Mexico City resumes its mood of somber 
melancholy. 

This quality of sadness and loneliness is only 
intensified by the brilliant lighting of the 
atreets. Some ancient towns seem to shake off 
their habitual gloom when, after sunset, they 
are shrouded in romantic semi-darkness. But 
Mexico is one of the best lighted cities in the 
world. New York may surpass it in its Great 
White Way with its electrical advertisements, 
but the majority of New York streets are pitch 
dark as compared with those of the Mexican 
<}apital. 

Electricity costs very little there. It comes 
from a waterfall of enormous horse power that 

191 



192 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 1 

lights all the cities of the Mexican plateau and 
drives the machinery in the factories and 
mines. That is why the street lighting of Mex- 
ico City is the best in the world. Every twenty- 
five feet there is an iron column with five large 
globes. The streets blaze like a conflagration. 
The lamps seem to meet a few yards ahead of 
yon, shutting you in between two narrowing 
walls of fire. 

The Night Lonesomeness 

And underneath all this splendor, as intense 
as the brightness of noontime — solitude, noth- 
ing, emptiness, made more acutely notice- 
able by the occasional appearance of some pas- 
ser-by. In this city of brightness the after- 
dinner problem of any one unable to go to a 
theater is something maddening. ''What can 
I do? Where can I go?" 

I used to go for a walk every night along the 
principal avenue of the city, wincing under the 
blinding glare. Before long I came to know 
by sight all my habitual companions on this 
promenade, much as you come to know by sight 
the people who eat regularly in your restaurant 
or stop at your hotel. 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 193 

One of tlieni was a dog. 

It was the same dog every night, and after 
several meetings I felt like wishing him good 
evening. 

There was also a man escorting his wife — 
the same man and the same wife each time — ' 
and at the end, though I had never spoken to 
them, I felt that I had known them all my life. 
They did not miss an evening. And other 
habitues went by along this great avenue, so 
royally illuminated, but as deserted as a village 
road — ^families returning from some party, 
some tertulia, loitering pairs of lovers, or 
hurrying taxicabs. 

Every so often a small motionless group of 
people — the entrance to some theater or movie 
show ! Beyond them silence again and solitude ! 
Again that electric lighted vacuum in which 
your footsteps echoed as in a tomb. 

I found Mexico a very silent city. 

Past Gaiety of the Diaz Regime 

People who have lived there all their lives 
assured me that in former times it was not like 
that. They said that under Diaz this city, 
which a famous traveler of the era of Spanish 



194 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

rule referred to as the "City of Palaces," had 
a night life as elegant and amusing as any great 
metropolis in the world. 

I am inclined to believe them. In those days 
there was peace and prosperity, though liberty 
may not have been so great. People could go 
out on the streets at night without running very 
serious risks. But now, after ten years of per- 
petual upheaval, bad business, and personal in- 
security for any one not connected with the rev- 
olutionary profession, how can the capital avoid 
an appearance of sadness and discouragement? 

Besides, the old wealthy families which sup- 
ported the amusements of other days have now 
been reduced to poverty or else they have gone 
abroad into exile far from Mexico. The newly 
rich are not anxious to display their wealth. 
They affect very modest ways of living, to 
avoid any questions as to how they may have 
made so much money in such a very short time. 

The worst of it is that the present situation 
offers no outlook toward better things. People 
had gotten used to life under Carranza, the way 
you get used to a disease. He was bad enough, 
but a new revolution would make things worse ! 
Many optimists believed there would be no 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 195 

more violent overturns of Governments. But 
the present revolution came all the same. And 
we may be sure it will not be the last. It is an. 
insurrection led by a number of different men 
for a single Presidency. In it are the seeds of 
several other revolutions, which will follow at 
greater or lesser intervals of time. 

I can imagine all that the faithful inhabitants 
of Mexico, who never deserted their country, 
have seen and suffered in these last years. And 
so I can understand why it is they stick to their 
houses at night and never go out except for 
some very urgent reason. 

Germanism in Mexico 

I do not attach so much importance to those 
early days of the great revolution's triumph, 
when the houses of the rich were pillaged and 
libraries and works of art were destroyed. 
Many revolutions, in the flush of first success, 
have been marred by episodes like these. The 
poor native, neglected by everybody, conserva- 
tives and liberals alike, had never been sent to 
school, save to the school of violence. He 
thought he was within his rights in tearing 
books to pieces and burning or selling them. 



196 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

A carbine meant more than a volume in liis 
eyes. The native looks around him in Mexico, 
and his peasant's insight into things tells him 
that it is not by reading books that people get 
to power and rule over other men. He sees that 
the successful man is the man on a bronco, with 
a lasso coiled around the horn of his saddle, a 
rifle slung over his shoulder and a machete 
dangling from his fist. 

The discouraging thing is that the pardon- 
able initial violence of the revolution was fol- 
lowed by the systematic, calculated violence of 
so-called peace, one act following another like 
the scenes on a theater program — cold-blooded 
outrages like those German militarism planned 
in Europe to overawe its foes with terror. The 
peaceful, harmless persons who remained in 
Mexico lived through all that. It was to escape 
all that that so many families fled to New York, 
Los Angeles, Paris, London or Madrid. 

Every triumphant General moved into the 
house that he liked best; and the domestic in- 
stincts of the Mexican guerrillero, which blend 
with his harsh and cruel disposition, were 
turned loose without any restraint. *'This au- 
tomobile for the 'old woman.* '* "This parlor 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 197 

set is just what mi India has been looking 
for.'* That was the case with the German sol- 
diers in the French cities. They plundered, but 
with the preferences of their wives and daugh- 
ters in mind. 

Public and Private Robbery 

When people have been on a visit to some 
conqueror's mansion in Mexico City they often 
go away nudging each other : ' ' Did you notice ? 
That furniture in the dining-room used to be- 
long to«So-and-So. ' ' There are women who quite 
openly wear famous gems given them by their 
husbands, but which once belonged to other wo- 
men. The more prudent ones proceed some- 
what differently. A popular actress in Mexico, 
whose mission it was in recent years to receive 
love letters from the Generals, along with 
jewels from the booty of revolution, has a gold- 
smith working for her who does nothing but 
transform lockets into rings and rings into 
breastpins. In the new form it will be harder 
for the original owners of the gems to identify 
them. 

In addition, there was robbery under private 
management, with all the mystery and intrigue 



198 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

familiar in the detective story and the movie 
drama. Especially notorious and terrifying 
was the "Band of the Gray Car." 

A well-to-do family, venturing to leave home 
for an evening call, on returning would find the 
house open, all the trunks and safes forced, 
every drawer turned topsy-turvy, and the ser- 
vants bound and gagged. On a table would be 
a note : * ' Do not report to the police. Silence is 
golden. Truly yours, The Band of the Gray 
Car." That would be the end of the matter. 
People would talk, of course, but in secret, with 
their friends. This Band dealt particularly 
with the homes of wealthy exiles, where such 
operations could be conducted with virtual im- 
punity. Any passer-by, seeing the formidable 
vehicle parked in front of a house, would do his 
best to get as far away as possible, and as soon 
as possible. 

There was good reason for fearing the ter- 
rible car. Its joy riders, though ordinary ban- 
dits themselves, proved to be all-powerful. The 
active leader of the Band, according to common 
report, was a young General, with a suspicious 
record and notorious morals, who kept a num- 
ber of actresses supplied with jewelry. Accord- 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 199 

ing to the same gossip, tlie ^'man-Mglier-up" in 
the whole business — and at this point one seems 
to enter fairy land — was, no less than one of the 
candidates for the Presidency, at the time chief 
of police. 

Gray Car an Unsolved Mystery 

I repeat that the story is hard to swallow, 
and I refuse to believe it. But for many people 
the former police chief remains ^ ' the man of the 
Gray Car." During the recent election cam- 
paign, his political enemies put a film on the 
screens on every circuit in the republic. It was 
a detective story dealing with the Gray Car out- 
rages. The purpose of the film was divined by 
everybody. It aimed to keep the memory of cer- 
tain doings fresh in the public mind. 

The real truth is that the mystery has never 
been solved. "When this General had given up 
his public office, Carranza started out to satisfy 
the public demand for a clean-up. He succeeded 
in catching the Gray Car and all its occupants 
red-handed. But the men corraled were mere 
tools, nothing more, common burglars hired to 
do a certain job. "They are bound to squeal," 
people thought, in the expectation of sensa- 
tional revelations. **They will denounce the 



200 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

men higher up to save their own ekins.** But 
the thieves died, one by one, in prison before the 
oases came to trial. Some were murdered out- 
right. Others "died suddenly." But not one of 
them talked. 

Danger to life was, for some years, much 
more serious for residents in Mexico, than 
danger to property. 

Worse Looters Than Villa 

The Zapatistas are the most slandered of all 
the numerous political groups in that much di- 
vided country. In reality Zapata's followers 
were the only sincere revolutionaries. They 
formed a sect rather than a party, and Zapata 
vs^as a prophet whom they obeyed. "Land for 
everybody!" That was his slogan. His men 
were barbarians, something like the Huns. 
They would fall upon Mexico City much as the 
barbarian invaders used to sweep down upon 
Rome. But they were honest men. No one in 
my hearing ever accused Zapata or any of his 
followers of getting rich off their raids. They 
smashed everything they could lay their hands 
on, but they never carried any of the pieces 
away in their pockets. 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 201 

Among these unselfish vandals of the revolu- 
tion we must reckon Villa, too. People who 
called themselves important many a time had 
to go and pay homage to this chieftain, or jus- 
tify their manner of living before him in the 
famous Pullman car, which was his regular 
domicile, and which is, to the history of contem- 
porary Mexico, what Attila's tent was to the 
dawn of the Middle Ages. 

But what I was going to say is this. The 
presence of the Zapatistas and the Villistas, so 
long denounced as bandits, even by the very men 
who used them early in the revolution, was 
much less feared by the honest, hard-working 
citizens of Mexico, than the approach of Gov- 
ernment troops. 

''And now for the Carranzistas, " they would 
say, as the bands of Zapata or Villa retired, 
and they would begin to weaken at the knees. 

And who were the Carranzistas ? They were 
Don Pablo Gonzalez and Alvaro Obregon! 

''Old Man" Carranza was way behind, com- 
ing from Vera Cniz, with all his cabinet furni- 
ture. 



202 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Don Pablo's Murder Jokes 

Gonzalez and Obregon represented trium- 
phant ' * Carranzismo. ' ' 

Genial, lovable chaps, these two old cronies, 
who, now that Carranza has been put out of the 
way, ask the world to accept them as two men 
of the future, two political virginities ! 

Don Pablo, so deferential toward persons and 
so meticulous about legality, would summon a 
group of officers. 

''Gentlemen, you are a court-martial. Put 
So-and-So on trial and have him shot. He is a 
nuisance.'' 

The court would come to order. The defend- 
ant would bring proof of complete innocence. 
His counsel would thrash around and tear their 
hair, and the court itself would end by asking 
for the culprit's release. 

That would not disconcert Don Pablo. He 
would draw his pen through the verdict and say 
to an Adjutant : "Go and get that So-and-So. ' * 
Mr. So-and-So would be at home, surrounded 
by family and friends and receiving con- 
gratulations on his acquittal. Then the new 
summons would come. ''More red-tape to un- 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 203 

wind, I suppose," the unlucky man would say. 
** Perhaps I forgot to sign some paper." 

A half hour later he would be in front of the 
firing squad. 

Ill-humor was the characteristic of all Don 
Pablo's practical jokes. 

How Obregon Behaved 

Obregon, for his part, had a lighter touch. 
His jests were more expansive, more theatrical. 
He is something like the Kaiser, in this respect, 
and doubtless in recognition of spiritual kinship 
with the man, William II., as Obregon claims, 
wanted to read .the book the Mexican Napoleon 
had written. The parallel can be pushed fur- 
ther. Obregon has an amputated arm; the 
Kaiser has a withered hand. They are both 
''cracked," as the phrase goes, both fond of 
sensational speeches, dramatic attitudes, and 
ostentatious military reviews. 

On his entry into the capital, Villa's con- 
queror took advantage of a public meeting to 
insult the whole population at one stroke. ''You 
Mexico-Cityites are so many females. Why 
don't you dress in petticoats'? This woman here 
is more of a man than the best of you. Here, 



204 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Citizeness, accept my pistol." And he pre- 
sented a revolver to a *' citizeness " on the stage, 
who was bearing a Sam Brown and had been 
much in evidence among Carranza's soldiers. 

The business men in Mexico City won this 
tribute from the General's eloquence, because, 
like the business men of Guadalajara, Puebla, 
and other important centers, they had refused 
to join the revolution. 

The so-called hero of Celaya liked to slap 
shopkeepers in the face, or set them to sweep- 
ing the streets. When his humor was most ex- 
pansive, he would dwell on the Spanish ances- 
try of the merchant class, and address some 
vulgar epithet to Spain, Mexican nationalism 
usually expresses itself in obscene insults to 
other nations. 

For the rest, he too ordered executions and 
executions, but as I said, always with a touch of 
good humor. 

Genial Stories of His Aide 

One of Obregon's most delightful ''parlor 
stunts" or after-dinner amenities is to narrate 
the life and miracles of General Benjamin Hill. 

"... and then — Hill, you know how Hill 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 206 

is — Hill puts Ms gun between that grocer's 
eyes, and says ' Charge, Fido, ' and the poor fish 
kneels down to be shot. But Ben doesn't even 
have to pull the trigger. The fellow has croaked 
from sheer fright . . . sheer fright!" 

'' . . . and then Hill — Hill was always like 
that — he lines 'em up against the wall, and 
bang! Oh, Hill is a terror, when he gets go- 
ing. . . ." 

"... and then. Hill, he bundled that bunch 
of priests into a train of cattle cars and sent 
them off to Vera Cruz, telling the engineer not 
to break the speed laws. That's a time they 
went to bed without their suppers! The trip 
took several days. But Hill always was an 
atheist, you know." 

"' . . . and then Hill, he says to those 
gachupins C gachupin/ like 'gringo,' for the 
American, is what a Mexican creole is called), 
he says to those gachupms, either you come 
across with the cash, or you get the firing squad. 
And the gachupms came across . . . came 
across!" 

As Obregon tells these tales of General Hill's 
prowess, he underlines the fine points with a 
smile that he would make a smile of disap- 



206 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

proval. In your astonisluneiit, as you listen, 
you ask yourself, ''But who can this Hill be! 
Some superior of Obregon, whose orders Obre- 
gon can criticize but not countermand?" 

Not at all! Hill is simply Obregon 's Chief of 
Staff, his ranking Lieutenant, who does nothing 
without permission. 

It is a case of cruelty masked by a jovial or, 
as I said, a good-humored hypocrisy. 

Real Types of Mexico's Rulers 

The silence of Mexico is not confined to the 
external aspects of the town. You feel it in in- 
dividuals as well. 

The more intelligent, the better educated a 
man is, the greater his intellectual distinction, 
the more taciturn and reserved he appears. 

People venture to talk only behind closed 
doors and with friends whom they trust im- 
plicitly. They have lived through such terrible 
experiences I They have such good reason to be 
afraid ! 

Some of my critics who find it to their inter- 
est to misinterpret me, since they cannot dis- 
pute the accuracy of my story, assert that I am 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 207 

describing a vaudeville Mexico, with nothing 
but burlesque characters and villains. 

They are right. I arn painting just those 
types, but I add, that those types are the men 
who govern, or pretend to be governing, the 
country. Behind them, keeping modestly and 
carefully out of sight — for to show themselves 
would mean sacrifice or exile — are the real peo- 
ple of Mexico, the people I respect and would 
like to see in power. 

The Good Men in Exile 

Mexico has any number of honest, cultivated, 
distinguished citizens who have never been gen- 
erals but have thrown credit on their names in 
the arts of peace. Where are they? Some of 
them have stayed, out of patriotic devotion, in 
Mexico — ^but attracting no attention to them- 
selves, and hoping that politics will never dis- 
cover them. Others have fled the deadly en- 
vironment. They are in Cuba, in Europe, in the 
United States. 

Against these men I shall never speak. In 
them lies the hope of Mexico, the only hope of 
salvation and restoration that remains. Their 
time will come when Mexico, exhausted from its 



208 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

frenzied dance of militarist anarchy, falls 
breathless to the ground. What connection is 
there between such people — ^writers, historians, 
physicians, lawyers, celebrated men bom in 
Mexico, who laid the foundations of the nation's 
prosperity — and the tortuous Don Pablo, the 
megalomaniac Obregon, the cattle thief Villa, 
and their gangs of pistol-bearing generals? 
Why should criticism of the excesses of such 
criminals, or ridicule of their absurd presump- 
tuousness, imply that Mexico has no people fit to 
manage an honest, unselfish and progressive 
civil government? 

The reason why I respect the Mexican exiles 
and have confidence in them, despite the fact 
that I know few of them personally and inti- 
mately, is precisely because they have been liv- 
ing in other countries and have acquired the 
broader outlook on national and international 
affairs that Mexico lacks seriously. 

Hostile to Foreigners 

They say that under Porfirio Diaz, Mexico 
had some respect for other countries of the 
world, that Mexico welcomed the foreigner and 
understood he represented progress. That is 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 209 

not the case to-day. I have never seen a coun- 
try more hostile to foreign things and ideas, 
more inclined to savagery in international rela- 
tions. 

To understand why, you have only to know 
its rulers personally. Hardly one of them ever 
crossed the frontiers of Mexico. Carranza was 
a man of unquestionable native talent. Yet he 
talked like a simpleton when he discussed the 
United States or Europe; and when I disillu- 
sioned him on some of his misconceptions, he 
opened his eyes in astonishment, as though he 
were listening to a tale of magic and magicians. 
Some of his Ministers could expatiate on the 
defects of the United States from first hand 
knowledge. They had spent a week-end once in 
San Antonio, Texas. 

Luis Cabrera was the expert of the crew. He 
was the most traveled of them all. He ''knew" 
the United States, Argentina an'd Chile, and he 
had toured Europe. His ''knowledge" con- 
sisted in repetitions of charges against Ameri- 
can or European political figures which he had 
read in some opposition newspaper, and often 
an unimportant sheet at that. The true great- 
ness of America, for instance, what the Ameri- 



210 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

can people has done or is doing, was a closed 
book to him. In his eyes other nations were 
poor copies of Mexico. 

Where Ignorance Is Satisfaction 

The victors of the moment are no better off. 
A few of the young men have been to the thea- 
ter on Broadway and they can talk about pink 
legs they have seen in the musical revues. I 
believe Don Pablo Gonzalez once ventured as 
far as Paris, but I am not sure. Obregon, cer- 
tainly, has never been in Europe and only once 
in the United States. That was in connection 
with his comer of the garhanzo or chick-pea 
market during the revolution proper. The mur- 
dered President, Don Venustiano, gave him the 
exclusive right to export chick-peas and Obre- 
gon cleaned up a tidy sum of money on the deal. 

The revolutionary underlings know still less 
about other countries. How can they be ex- 
pected to esteem the foreigner? In Mexico I 
heard Deputies and Senators say complacently: 
' ' We don 't need any outsiders here. They come 
only to fleece us." 

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, all devote 
large appropriations to advertisement abroad. 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 211 

They are anxious to attract immigration and 
capital. They understand that it is the for- 
eigner and not the native who is exploited. The 
immigrant leaves his capital, his labor, and 
most often his life, in the adopted country. He 
becomes attached to the land as an element of 
order and productivity, and he raises children 
to inherit what he leaves. 

Mexico, quite to the contrary, hires savages 
to go to Congress and say : ''Keep the foreigner 
out." And it serv^es her right. The only civ- 
ilization in Mexico was put there by the for- 
eigners whom Porj&rio Diaz brought in. All 
that survives will survive through their efforts. 
The trouble is that foreigners are becoming 
fewer and fewer, and there will soon be none at 
all unless peace and security are restored. 

Hatred for Profit 

There have been revolutions in the past in 
other Spanish-American countries, and they 
occur occasionally there still. But in them it is 
a question of native thrashing native. They 
leave the outsider alone. Not so in Mexico. The 
rural populace has been taught by so-called rev- 
olutionaries to hate everything foreign, and the 



212 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

first thing the natives do when they mutiny is 
to attack the merchant class: ''Death to the 
Spaniards! Down with the gacliupins!" Their 
antipathy is not all a matter of historical tradi- 
tion. Spaniards constitute the majority among 
business men. If the natives cannot find a 
Spaniard, an American, a Frenchman or an 
Italian will serve their purpose just as well. 
The important thing is that he have a plate- 
glass window in his store and a strong-box with 
money in it. Wlien they have cut the mer- 
chant's throat and cleaned out the money 
drawer they go back to the mountains to defend 
the sacred principles of revolution. 

I have been in Mexico and heard with my own 
ears the admissions and complaints of my Span- 
ish countrymen. "I have made and been 
robbed of three fortunes. Now I'm going to try 
once more. Just when I'm getting on my feet 
a revolution comes along and takes in a week 
all I have made in five years." They stick to 
the game as the ruined gambler sticks to the 
card table. Besides, they were brought up in 
the country and have formed attachments there. 
They have broken all outside connections. "You 
see, I'm not so young as I was. It's too late to 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 213 

start over again somewhere else. "Where oonld 
Igor' 

No Exception to Spain 

When the European nations present their 
claims on Mexico the Spanish Government, 
which has an affection for that country, as it 
has for all the American republics of Spanish" 
language, will send in a bill also, less in the hope 
of collecting it than with the idea of emphasiz- 
ing the extent of Spain's forbearance. Robbery 
will be the least important item. The world will 
then know how many hundreds of Spanish citi- 
zens have been put to death by the regenerators 
of the Mexican people, Obregonistas as well as 
followers of Villa. 

"But they were interfering in politics. They 
were supporting Porfirio Diaz." 

Such countercharges will be made by the very 
men who shot these Spaniards. It will be a 
case of a defendant acting as his own judge and 
his own witness. 

The fact will not prevent those executioners 
of Spaniards from finding some hack writer in 
Spain to defend them at so many dollars ai 
volume and write their panegyric. 



214 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

I confess that my own ideas on Mexico have 
changed somewhat since I went there and saw 
things at first hand. 

Some people may think it strange that a man 
known as a revolutionist in his own country 
should treat many revolutionaries in Mexico so 
harshly. 

Well, yes ! If all the revolutions in the world 
were like Mexico 's I would be a reactionary. 

Real vs. Fake Revolutions 

My revolutionary disposition makes it im- 
possible for me to compromise with a fake 
revolution. 

I have passed many years of my life trying 
vainly to overthrow the Spanish monarchy and 
set up a republic in Spain. I have been in jail 
I don't know how many times for plain speak- 
ing in my newspaper publications or for com- 
plicity in attempts at armed insurrection. 

I was court-martialed and sent to jail for a 
year and a half (and I served my sentence) for 
opposing the war between Spain and the United 
States and upholding Cuba's right to her 
independence. 

During my political career I lived in extreme 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 215 

poverty. I could not write. I could not work 
at any profession. All my time was taken up 
with the revolutionary cause. I never held of- 
fice. My only public position was that of Dep- 
uty to Parliament, to which I was returned 
seven times, in a country where Congressmen 
receive not a cent for their work in the Cham- 
bers. 

I fought a losing fight. But how can I com- 
promise with the false Mexican revolution, 
where every leader has gotten rich, or, if not, 
has simply not succeeded in getting rich and is 
cooking up a new insurrection so that his turn 
may come? 

I am not afraid of revolutions in principle, 
provided after destroying they know how to re- 
build. But I have no use for the Mexican revo- 
lution, which breaks everything to pieces, car- 
ries off all the debris it can gather into its arms, 
and then does nothing whatever to replace what 
has been lost. 

Burlesque and Boredom 

The Russian revolution may seem to many 
people to be the work of lunatics ; but the luna^ 
tics are honest in their madness; they are 



216 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

dreamers, willing to live on bread and water 
for their ideals. There may have been robbery 
in Russia, as there is in every revolution, but 
robbery by the scum of society, the worthless 
element that exists everywhere. Lenin and his 
intimate circle of friends have not been laying 
up money during these last years. 

Is there a Bolshevik in Mexico who can say 
as much? 

As an anti-militarist and true revolutionary 
I cannot sympathize with Mexican militarism. 
I am consistent with myself. I fought German 
militarism, which had a tradition glorious in 
its own eyes and a scientific outlook as well, be- 
cause I thought it a menace to the world. I can- 
not make peace, therefore, with Mexican mili- 
tarism, though that militarism is an affair of 
clowns and savages, menaces no other nation by 
its power, and simply discredits Mexico and 
everybody who chances to speak the language 
used by its absurd heroes, who are burlesques 
part of the time and bores for the rest. 

As a Spaniard I hate the men who have 
aroused the sleeping barbarism of the poor na- 
tive to hatred against the foreigners. Those 
men have caused the murder of many innocent 



MEXICO'S OMINOUS SILENCE 217 

Spaniards. They are the ones responsible for 
the death of many Americans employed in the 
mines and oil districts in Mexico. 

As a lover of Spanish-speaking America, of 
the so-called, though badly so-called, Latin 
America, I feel deep hostility, not toward Mex- 
ico as a people and a people that is having mis- 
fortunes enough and to spare, but toward the 
fictitious Mexico of the false revolutionaries 
who have brought the country to its present 
pass — the only Mexico, unfortunately, which 
outsiders are able to see from a distance. 

The Evil in the Show Window 

Mexico's proximity to the United States 
makes her the show window of Latin America. 
Mexico is the first thing people see as they turn 
their eyes southward. It is useless to talk of 
the marvelous progress of the South American 
countries. All that a hundred and ten million 
Americans can see is the Mexico of the present, 
a show window of horrors, with blood-stained 
samples changed from day to day. 

And, thanks to the sad advertisement the 
Mexican revolution, accomplishing absolutely 
nothing that is useful or good, has been giving 



218 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

us for the last ten years, we Spaniards and 
citizens of Spanish America have been more 
and more discredited each day. 

The Americans of the United States put us 
all in the same boat. "We are all sharers in one 
disgrace. 

On this point, and on the relations of Mexico 
and the United States, I shall have something 
to say in my next article. 



X. MEXICO Amy the united states 

THE politicians of the Mexican revolution 
know nothing about the United States. 
They have never, as a rule, been outside their 
own country. They also know nothing about 
Europe. But the ignorance they show on all 
matters touching the republics of Latin Amer- 
ica (so called) is beyond conception. 

Carranza was always dreaming of a scheme 
of his to build up a league of Latin-American 
nations ; its purpose was to counterbalance the 
power of the United States. He thought such a 
league would give him strength and enable him 
to put on a bold face in Washington. 

Don Venustiano, on at least two occasions, 
outlined his plan to me. I should hardly call it a 
plan, perhaps, for it never reached the blue- 
print stage. In reality, Carranza was not on 
friendly terms with a single man of importance 
in South America. 

Needless to say, Mexico was to play the lead- 
ing role in the future league, and Don Venusti- 
ano was to be director general. 

219 



220 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

The sense of personal importance is a charac- 
teristic of present-day politicians in Mexico. 
It is matched only by their absolute ignorance 
of everything that goes on beyond the Mexican 
frontiers. 

In a way their logic could not be sounder. 
Mexico has fifteen million people. No Spanish- 
speaking nation in the Americas has so many. 
Then, Mexico is the oldest of the Latin- Ameri- 
can countries, and — age before beauty. 

Explaining South America 

I remember the flush of anger that came over 
their faces one day when I failed to suppress an 
exclamation of surprise at one of their ques- 
tions. ''Which city is the larger and prettier, 
Buenos Aires or Mexico? Can Argentina be 
compared in any way at all with the Mexican 
Eepublic?" 

''Excuse me, gentlemen,*' I said, "have you 
gone crazy? Buenos Aires is the leading Amer- 
ican city after the large centers in the United 
States. Buenos Aires is the second Latin city 
in the world. It comes next to Paris. It is 
larger than Rome. It is larger than Madrid. 
The Argentine Eepublio is the second largest 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 221 

grain-producing nation in the world. The 
United States alone exceeds her figures for 
cereals; as for meat, Argentina leads every- 
body." 

**But Argentina has only seven million peo- 
ple," they answered proudly; ''there are fif- 
teen million Mexicans." 

''That would let you out, if it were a ques- 
tion of counting noses and ignoring quality. 
Those seven million people in Argentina pro- 
duce ten times as much as you and they spend 
twice as much money abroad. That is why their 
commerce prospers. They export to the whole 
world. They are rich. 

"And don't forget another thing. The popu- 
lation there is all white. They are not revolt- 
ing all the time. They invite foreigners in to 
share their wealth, because they know that the 
greater the immigration the faster their coun- 
try will progress. ' ' 

And the Advantages of Peace 

I went on, then, to talk about Chile, with a 
population still smaller than that of Argentina. 
But Chile is utilizing all her resources above 
and under ground. Splendid mines, splendid 



222 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

agriculture. And she has butlt np national in- 
dustry. ''Chile/' I continued, "leaves an un- 
forgettable impression upon every foreigner 
who visits the country. She welcomes him with 
open arms. In the course of a whole century, 
Chile has had but one real revolution." 

Then we passed on to Uruguay. ' ' Uruguay, ' ' 
I said, ''was once a very troublous State. But 
now things have settled down there, and the na- 
tion has been enjoying a prosperous era of 
peace. Uruguay has developed her natural 
wealth to such a point that her money tops 
world exchange. 

"But don't forget one thing," I said. "All 
those nations are nations of whites. As for 
Brazil, her prosperity in recent years is phe- 
nomenal.'* 

* ' Wait a minute ! ' ' they interrupted. * ' Brazil 
has many negroes. The majority of the popu- 
lation is black." 

"It doesn't matter which race is in the ma- 
jority, ' ' I replied. ' ' The only relevant question 
is the race and civilization of those in control. 
Brazil has always been governed by a minority 
of very intelligent people, up-to-date on inter- 
national affairs. Without interruption for 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 223 

twenty-five or thirty years, Brazil kept Baron 
Rio Branco — a sort of Porfirio Diaz of diplo- 
macy — in charge of her foreign relations, with 
the result that Brazilian diplomacy has been the 
cleverest in the New World. She has got all 
she wants ont of the United States and will con- 
tinue to get what she wants." 

''But there are Spanish- American republics 
in as much confusion as Mexico," they objected, 
"and just as fond of revolutions." 

"Yes, my dear friends," I said, "but the 
noise a firecracker makes depends on the place 
where you set it off. It doesn't sound so loud 
out in tiie street as it does in the parlor, for in- 
stance. You can do things out in the backwoods 
that would get you into jail if you tried them on 
Fifth Avenue in New York. "When a revolution 
breaks out in some country in the interior of 
South America, only the people there need 
worry. Revolutionaries down that way, be- 
sides, are careful not to murder any foreigners. 
Their capers get half a dozen lines in the big 
world newspapers, and the day after everybody 
has forgotten them. 



224 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Plain Words About Mexico 

**But Mexico, luckily or unluckily, is tlie most 
conspicuous place on the American Continent. 
It also has the best acoustics. Mexico is the 
head of our Spanish-speaking world. It is high- 
est north, in immediate contact with the United 
States. You are the show window in front of 
which a hundred and ten million Americans 
walk by every day. And what do they see? 
Nothing but horrible and disgusting exhibits! 
If the display itself were not bad enough, you 
would have other claims on world attention. 
Your revolutions last for years and years, and 
you break all records for the number of for- 
eigners you kill. 

*'You never ask anybody when you feel in- 
clined to start one of your revolutionary merry- 
go-rounds. You don't want to be told by any- 
body. Very well! It's your business and you 
can run it to suit yourselves, I suppose. But 
then you have no right to expect us Spaniards 
to palliate your crimes, or attempt to justify 
them out of family pride, because we all happen 
to speak the same language. 

** Mexico has been a disgrace to everything 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 225 

Latin American and Spanish, for ten years past. 
Humanity at large is under no obligation to 
specialize in political geography. As a matter 
of fact, no one knows the whole world well, not 
even the best educated people. A few of us try 
to learn what we can, a very few of us. The vast 
majority of people are alike everywhere, in the 
United States, England, France and all other 
places. And the moment they hear a word of 
our language, they say, in a superior manner: 
* Oh, yes, Spaniards ! South Americans ! Mexico ! 
ViUa!' 

''That settles the matter for them. That is 
all they know or care to know. A shrug of the 
shoulders finishes the argument. Why should 
they talk with or about an inferior section of 
humanity? 

''They are ignorant people, I know. I have 
met people in the United States who imagine 
that Mexico is in South America and they are 
surprised to learn it is as much a part of North 
America as their own country. But American 
ignorance is no excuse for the conduct of revo- 
lutionary Mexico, nor does it free us from the 
reproach that Mexico brings upon us all. 



226 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

The Show Window of Latin America 

"Having said that Mexico is a show window, 
I am going on with the figure. Latin America 
is the shop and the United States is the street. 
Only those Americans who have done business 
inside know that on the shelves there are high- 
class, np-to-date goods. A few American buyers 
know that there are peaceful, progressive coun- 
tries in Latin America^ — Argentina, Chile, Bra- 
zil and Uruguay. They know also that other 
countries still have revolutions because they 
have not yet reached their full growth, and be- 
cause, like Mexico, they have ignorant masses 
of natives, governed, however, by intelligent and 
distinguished whites. There is Peru, for in- 
stance, or other Northern Republics too numer- 
ous to mention. 

"But the immense American majority that 
simply goes by on the street, the immense ma- 
jority that makes up public opinion in the 
United States, has no idea of what is to be 
found inside the shop. It sees only what is in 
the show window. And what is that? Decapi- 
tated heads, to begin with, for Mexico still de- 
capitates people and puts the severed heads on 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 227 

exMbition; then maclietes dripping witli blood; 
then a string of murdered foreigners; then a 
President, perhaps, shot by his bodyguard; 
then a friend clasping hands with a friend and 
driving a knife into his back; finally an edu- 
cated man serving as councilor to a bandit, pro- 
moted General ! 

''It's time that show window were washed 
up a bit. Mexico, the real Mexico, has a much 
better line of goods to advertise than that. All 
you have to do is change the management inside. 
You need to put some one in charge who knows 
more about books and less about machine pis- 
tols. And until the change is made, we must go 
on attacking and protesting, in the good name 
of the America of Spanish language. 

Not Fifteen Millions That Oonnt 

**You say there are fifteen millions of you," 
I continued. "You may be that big, some day, 
when you get a school system in Mexico and 
pay your school teachers. For the present, 
there are two millions of you whites only, a. 
scant two millions, at that, and you don't know 
where they all are. There are five or six mil- 
lion pure Indians. I don't consider the Indian 



228 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

snch a bad fellow after all. But what have you 
done with him'? You have robbed him and mal- 
treated him worse in one century of independ- 
ence than the Spanish administrative routineers 
did in thrice that space of time. Your liberal 
laws deprived him of his lands. Your revolu- 
tions have shot Indians down in great masses 
by making them fight for things they knew 
nothing about. Not one of your political par- 
ties has made the Indian go to school. The In- 
dian may amount to something when your na- 
tion gets prosperous. Now he is nothing but 
the eternal victim of your pohtical lies. 

''Then we come to the majority of the Mexi- 
can population, the detritus, the erosion, aris- 
ing from the meeting and amalgamation of two 
races. You have from seven to eight million 
mestizos, half-breeds, whitewashed Indians or 
bronzed white men. There may be a few decent 
individuals among them, as there are in any 
mass of people. But the majority of them are 
loafers, fond of noise and big talk, soap-box 
artists with a gift for the theatrical pose, idlers 
and bums, who never did a stroke of hard work 
in their lives and hate any kind of success that 
is not attained over night. They are the raw 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 229 

material of your revolutionaries. They take to 
politics like ducks to water, but to a politics of 
persons and not of ideas. 

* * There are not fifteen millions of you. There 
are two millions at the outside. Make it five, 
if that suits you better. You might be able to 
scrape together three millions of serviceable 
mestizos, who are good, at least, for something, 
though not for much. In the future, when you 
get to be governed by men — ^men in the best 
sense of the word — ^and not by Generals, when 
Mexico gets to be a truly civilized nation cap- 
able of living in peace with itself, then you may 
really become the second nation of the Americas. 
You will have not only fifteen million people, 
but many more; for your potential wealth is 
enormous, and foreigners will flock here the 
moment danger is past. As it is, poor Mexico 
must remain a third-rate nation among the other 
Spanish-American republics, and that thanks 
to the counterfeit revolutionaries." 

Incapable of Broad Vision 

Whenever the Mexican notables started to 
talk about the South America they were anxious 



230 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

to attach to their interests, they went com- 
pletely off the track. 

Cabrera, Don Venustiano^s Minister of Fi- 
nance, was the only one at all acquainted with 
those countries. He had been in Chile and Ar- 
gentina for some months during the European ■ 
war, trying to organize a ''Congress of Neutral 
Nations," which, in reality, was to support 
Germany. 

What did he learn on that visit! 

I must advise my readers that I lived six 
years down there myself, and I think I know 
those places a little bit better than Cabrera. 

He saw all the bad points about Buenos Aires 
and Santiago, but he had no eyes at all when 
it came to anything really great. There was a 
look of pity on his face as he talked about Ar- 
gentina and Chile. Wliat were they compared 
with the grandeur of revolutionary Mexico? 
As I listened to his chatter, I had to admire the 
man's power of imagination, his ability to 
squeeze reality into his own narrow vision and 
to find only things that flattered his vanity. 

Don Venustiano, crafty and redoubtable as he 

was in political intrigue, proved to be the easi- 
ly 

I 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 231 

est of easy marks when it came to some purely 
intellectual question. 

He had to find a name for the league of Span- 
ish-American nations he had in mind. 

Well, he might have called it the Hispanic- 
American Federation, or the Ibero-American 
Alliance, or the Latin-American League. But 
that all seemed so insipid and hackneyed to 
him, so blase. 

The "Indio- American Federation" 

I suppose he must have turned to the Madame 
de Stael of the revolution, the ex-stenographer 
or telegraph-girl, who had invented the "Car- 
ranza Doctrine." In any event, somebody or 
other produced this masterpiece: ^'The Indio- 
American Federation." 

Dear old Don Venustiano! He must have 
been thinking of the South American statesmen 
as so many showily dressed mulattoes or half- 
breed Indians, with faces as swarthy as those of 
the Ministers and Generals he had gathered 
around himself. 

When I heard that **Indio- American" idea,. 
I could hardly help laughing in his face. I could 



232 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

imagine what the Argentine, Chilean and Ura- 
guayan leaders would look like when they re- 
ceived that proposition. The foremost men in 
Argentina come from old colonial families. 
They are polished and refined in manners. 
They went to school for the most part in Paris. 
Chileans have the dignified and chivalrous 
bearing of the warriors of the Conquest, to 
which they add a perfect English education. 
In Uruguay, the cultivated people show strong 
European influences in which the noblest Span- 
ish tradition predominates. 

*'Indio-Ameriean nations !" 

It would be just as appropriate to enter the 
White House in Washington and ask the Presi- 
dent of the United States to take off his glasses, 
paint two red and blue rings around his eyes 
and replace his regulation tophat with a crown 
of feathers! 

Mistakes of the United States 

I must frankly confess that the policy of the 
United States toward Mexico in recent years 
has been a bad one. 

It is not so much that the policy in itself has 
been bad. 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 233 

The trouble with it has been that it has not 
been a policy. 

From Mexico, the United States has looked 
like a boat steered by a drnnken helmsman. It 
was as likely to head in one direction as an- 
other. None could tell where it would finally 
land. 

I admire Wilson's wartime attitude toward 
European affairs. But, with his bitterest 
enemies, I recognize that in matters relating to 
Mexico his procedure has been incoherent. 

He was with Huerta and against Huerta, with 
Carranza and against Carranza. At one time 
he was even with Villa, the bandit. I remember 
that years ago I saw an important American 
newspaper which carried a picture of Villa 
and an article entitled "The Mexican Napo- 
leon. ' ' 

I also recognize that all that Wilson did he 
did in the best of faith and with the object of 
arriving at the best possible solution. There 
were moments, besides, when the Mexican mess 
was involved enough to turn the steadiest man 
in the world crazy. 

But Wilson's indecisive and variable conduct 
was fatal. Any policy at all, had it been con- 



234 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

sistent and continuous, would liave been pref- 
erable. 

That, however, is beside the point. Many 
writers have dealt with Wilson and the Mexican 
question. I need not say over again what others 
have already proved so clearly. 

How Carranza Used Us 

As contrasted with Wilson, and once he was 
firmly seated in power, Carranza pursued a 
policy that was coherent, invariable and con- 
tinuous. 

Thanks to Don Venustiano, a new means of 
governing became familiar in Mexico. Very 
efficient recipes for controlling individuals and 
groups had been inherited from earlier regimes. 
The prison and the firing squad have always 
been considered persuasive instruments for 
bringing one's enemies to reason. But it some- 
times happens that large portions of the popu- 
lation have to be intimidated. A general exe- 
cution being impossible, some other device must 
be resorted to. Carranza hit upon the ''threat 
of American intervention," "Yankee treach- 
ery," ''the American menace," "the peril from 
the North." 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 235 

During the last days of my stay in Mexico, 
I could see that things were going badly. The 
newspapers, which always took their queue 
from Barragan, who took his, in turn,, from Don 
Venustiano, began to speak of the ''Yankee 
peril" and ''United States intervention" as an 
imminent possibility. Obregon's uprising, ac- 
cording to the editorials, was planned to fur- 
nish a pretext for an American invasion of the 
country, and Uncle Sam was waiting the word 
across the frontier, much as an actor stands be- 
hind a piece of scenery on the stage ready to 
come on at the dramatic moment. Such re- 
ports aimed to prevent sympathizers with the 
insurrection from joining in. 

The "Iron Heel" Upon Cuba 

Some of the dailies sent shivers up and down 
their readers' backs with the most terrible 
prophecies. 

*'If another revolution succeeds in Mexico," 
they said, "if the order established by the benef- 
icent Government of Carranza is overthrown, 
the Americans will invade our territories; the 
iron heel will be pressed upon our necks; we 
shall fall so low in the scale of nations, our lot 



236 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

will be so sad and so disgraceful that we will be 
virtually slaves, comparable only with . . . 
Cuba." 

I was as much surprised at this comparison 
as I had been over Minister Cabrera's observa- 
tions on Argentina and Chile. The hardest man 
in the world to convince is the man who wants 
to be wrong. 

**My dear Sir," I said to the editor some 
days later, ''go all over Cuba, if you wish, and 
I am sure you will fail to find that iron heel. 
The only American footwear you will discover 
on that island will be the zigzagging boots of 
some New Yorker who has fled to Havana to es- 
cape prohibition. Cuban real estate has quad- 
rupled in value in recent years. People there 
are too rich, if anything ; they are wallowing in 
money. Revolutions have gone out of style in 
Cuba. When anybody tries to start one, they 
just send him up to New York for a good time 
on Broadway." 

The journalist looked at me half in surprise, 
half incredulously. The wife of a General, one 
of the newer hatch, gave me that same look 
when I laughed at her on one occasion. The lady 
told me she was anxious to spend a few weeks in 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 237 

Havana, but did not dare to go because she had 
never learned EngKsh. 

Value of the "American Danger" 

The ''American danger" is, as I was saying, 
one of the secrets of successful government in 
Mexico. The Generals are always using that 
argument. Otherwise the people might be in- 
clined toward a civilian rule. Since the danger 
of intervention exists it is quite logical to leave 
military men in power; although those Gen- 
erals, quite aside from their personal courage, 
know just about as much military science as 
I do. 

Carranza, for his part, was never in such good 
humor, never so self-assured, never so con- 
vinced of his mission on earth, as when he was 
arguing a diplomatic question with the United 
States. Several of the diplomats I met m 
Washington were following the Mexican nego- 
tiations with this country as a matter of pro- 
fessional interest, and one of them, a man of 
letters, found a phrase that summed up the situ- 
ation exactly: ''Carranza is doing his best to 
cultivate the incident." 



238 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

The * ' cultivation of incidents, ' ' as well as the 
delight was also the supreme talent of Don 
Venustiano. When he received some demand 
from the United States he must have smiled as 
a boxing master smiles when he sees an open- 
ing for a tap on his pupil's jaw. ''Why, here is 
another incident just as things were getting 
dull. I must cultivate it carefully. If I manage 
right I can stick in the world's head lines for 
a month or more. ' ' 

Carranza in His Element 

Diplomatic proceedings, like legal proceed- 
ings in court, have their delays and postpone- 
ments. I do not know the usual time allotted 
for replying to a diplomatic communication. 
Call it ten days ; it was ten days of keen amuse- 
ment and anticipation for Don Venustiano. 
First he would see Cabrera, his Mephistopheles, 
and then would call a council of licenciados, 
"doctors of law," professional squabblers of 
the district courts, expert in nosing out the 
trivial excuse, the fantastic objection, the mi- 
croscopic point of legality. Their masterpiece 
of deliberate absurdity would be ready on the 
tenth day, and it would reach Washington at 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 239 

two minutes before midniglit. ''Fifty years 
ago, and again one hundred years ago, the 
United States Government took the position 
now maintained by the Mexican Republic. . . .*' 
The answer would be always in such terms. 

Washmgton, irritated at the delay, would im- 
mediately reply: ''Omitting your review of 
ancient precedents, kindly give a definite answer 
to the demand now in question." 

Another smile of Don Venustiano. . -.■ . 

Another council of licenciados. . . . 

Another interval of ten days. 

And then: "In reply to note one thousand 
three hundred and seventy-seven, we beg to 
point out that on the point it raises, the United 
States Supreme Court ruled in 1827. ..." 

Weeks and even months would go by in this 
nervous expectation. A matter that two seri- 
ous business men could have settled in five min- 
utes would assume the proportions of a world 
crisis. Newspapers would issue extras. People 
in the United States would begin to speculate 
on the chances of war. Parties in Mexico would 
talk of getting together to resist intervention, 
likely to break on the following day. 

Meanwhile in the Presidential palace in the 



240 MEXICO IN REVOLUTION 

Mexican capital a venerable old man would be 
winking slyly behind a pair of blue glasses and 
stroking a white beard in wise satisfaction. 

Home Estimate of "Old Whiskers" 

Don Venustiano would always yield in the 
end, before public tension became overstrained 
and the game got too dangerous. He would do 
simply what had been asked in the first place; 
but it would be thought in Mexico that he had 
done much less and that, thanks to its energy 
and skilful diplomacy, the American invasion 
had been stopped on the threshold of the coun- 
try and at little cost to the dignity of the nation. 

The "old man" knew what he was about, and 
he knew his people well. I have heard his most 
relentless foes say of him: ''Old "Whiskers is 
a . . . " (and here the worst of epithets and 
the most atrocious slander), "but youVe got to 
give him credit for one thing — ^he's a patriot, 
and he has kept the Yankees out many times. 
No one could handle the international situation 
better." 

And Carranza's admirers would imagine in 
all good faith that in Washington, President, 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 241 

Cabinet, Senate and House were seeing with 
terror in their dreams the red-white-and-green 
nose, the white beard and the ogrelike smile of 
Don Venus tiano. 

That is the way with Mexicans. They escape 
from the cruel realities which surround them 
by caressing the illusion that they are first in 
something. Thus can be explained Cabrera's 
complacent disparagement of Chile and Argen- 
tina, the iron heel that is oppressing Cuba, the 
tyrannical imposition of English upon Ha- 
vana's schools, and the flight of American 
statesmanship before the terrible Carranza. 

Unfortunately, however, Don Venustiano has 
trained a school and created a succession in 
Mexican diplomacy. All who are to follow him 
have learned the lesson that ''the incident must 
be cultivated. ' ' As new disputes arise with the 
United States, their solutions will be deferred 
as long as possible that somebody may be able 
to pose as the savior of his country. 

And if some General-President is unlucky 
enough not to come by an ''incident" honestly, 
he will be quite capable of making one for him- 
self. 



242 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

The Present a Time to Be Amiable 

I am well aware that for some months to come 
there will be no "cultivation of incidents" ia 
Mexico. Carranza himself did no such garden- 
ing while, with his future problematical and in- 
secure, he was staying in Vera Cruz and needed 
American support. He began the game long 
afterward, when he thought himself solidly es- 
tablished in power. Obregon and his friends 
will be very deferential, very polite, very hum- 
ble even, if necessary, toward the United States. 
Their position has not yet been consolidated. 
Their Government has not yet been recognized 
by other nations. A corpse is standing in the 
way — the corpse of *'old man" Carranza. So 
the corpse of Madero rose menacingly in the 
path of Huerta! 

Besides, there is a question, a question of the 
first importance, which dominates all other 
Mexican questions and demands an answer 
urgently. 

Mexico, which might be the richest country 
in the world, next to the United States, is in a 
very precarious situation. The taxes on i)e- 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 243 

troleum and minerals (both owned in large part 
by Americans) and the proceeds of internal im- 
posts are barely sufficient to meet tlie most 
pressing State expenditures. 

The revolution destroyed much without re- 
placing anything; and the absence of all that 
was stolen, or dismantled to nobody's profit, is 
beginning to make itself felt. 

The result is that, to go on living, the coun- 
try needs a loan of hundreds of millions. 

Carranza had the project of a loan in mind 
for a long time before his death, though he 
never had the courage to propose it publicly. 
He was conscious of his bad reputation in mat- 
ters of national finance. All the banks in the 
world would say ''no," in comment on the do- 
ings of his financial advisers with foreign banks 
and foreign enterprises in Mexico. Besides he 
was jealous of his reputation with the lower 
classes, and he preferred to leave the Presi- 
dency without having negotiated a foreign loan. 
That pleasure he was reserving for Bonillas, 
who, he supposed, had powerful financial 
friends in the United States and would be in a 
position to find millions. 



244 MEXICO m REVOLUTION 

Plea for a Loan Coming 

The new governors of Mexico will come out 
with their request within a few weeks, or a few 
months at most. Formerly such petitions could 
be addressed to a number of possible sources ; 
English, French and German financial firms 
existed in abundance in Mexico. But now they 
have all failed or else are badly in need of 
money for themselves. The United States is 
the only market open. "When they want ready 
money they will have to come here. 

American financiers do not require any advis- 
ing. They know all they need to know about for- 
eign countries and their minds must be already 
made up concerning Mexico. That country has 
not paid interest on its old debts for several 
years, and its fake revolutionaries are alone to 
blame. They have dishonored themselves in the 
eyes of all their creditors, completely destroy- 
ing the remnants of Mexico *s prestige surviving 
from a happy time when the republic was 
solvent and could get money anywhere. 

If I am not mistaken, American finance will 
make this answer: *'We will lend you nothing 
at all. A loan to you would serve to foment 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES 245 

militarism, aggravate present wrongs and per- 
petuate a crying shame. We should be glad to 
help Mexico in her distress and give her ample 
credit ; but only when the republic has a civilian 
government, a government of people who have 
traveled, who know how to develop a country, 
who know how to deal with people of other na- 
tions, and are able to think as white people 
think. To you Generals, not a penny ! " 

And in fact the way to put an end to mili- 
tarism of the Mexican kind, a militarism so de- 
ceitfully revolutionary, so immoral and so Ger- 
man, is not to give a penny. 



THE END 



3W7 



